


Live Free

by SplickedyHat



Series: Officer Present//Director Absent [1]
Category: Motorcity
Genre: Car Chases, F/M, Gang shenanigans, Gen, OCs - Freeform, One-Sided Beatings, One-Sided OC/Canon Character, Violence, prison break - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-05-28 08:26:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 155,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6322210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplickedyHat/pseuds/SplickedyHat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mike Chilton only came back to Motorcity a week ago, there to pick up the pieces left behind by the Genesis Pod, the echoes of a rallying cry still hanging in the air--"For Mike and Motorcity!"  But now he's gone again, and without him the Burners' new challenges seem increasingly insurmountable; a new enemy--a second Red in Kane Co. colors, a war brewing between the Motorcity gangs, and one Burner secretly bearing unimaginable pressure from both sides of a double life.  Something has to give.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. For Mike and Motorcity!!  A Calm Before the Storm!

**Author's Note:**

> HeatedHeadwear and SpoonerizeSwiftness are pleased to present their first actual collaborative fic on their shared account! It's not Homestuck, though. It's a Motorcity chapterfic taking place after the end of the show.  
> If anyone is curious about the exact nature of our collaboration, we wrote the outline together simultaneously in Google Docs and then began slowly writing whatever random parts caught our interest, adding onto each other's sections and slowly connecting them as it grew. And oh boy did it grow. We have many tens of thousands of words to share with whoever is still reading Motorcity fanfiction, so buckle up! (Haha, car reference. Ha.)  
> We've decided to withhold some of the tags for spoiler reasons, but if you want a full list just to make sure this is something you want to read, here's a link: http://toastyhat.tumblr.com/private/141473415334/tumblr_o4fdl8Xirk1rpgisp

“Come on, guys, just think about it,” says Mike Chilton.  “It could work, right?”

“No.”

“Probably not.”

“Don’t even try.”

“Uh...yeah, no.”

Mike frowns at his friends, then cranes his neck over his shoulder and shouts, “Jacob, back me up here!  It could work, right?”

 _“No!”_ echoes a voice from the back of the garage.  The rest of the Burners give Mike identical _“I told you so”_ looks.

Mike groans, running a square hand through his hair so that for a moment his bangs no longer obscure his eyebrows.  “It went down fine when you guys had to take down the Genesis Pod!”

Chuck, gangly, freckled, and blonde, looks uncomfortable--or more uncomfortable than usual.  “Yeah, but that’s a pretty extreme example, Mikey...and you weren’t there for most of it, so--”

“What, so the only time all the Motorcity gangs can work together is when I’m not here?” says Mike, spreading his hands in exasperation.  “I don’t believe that!  Kane couldn’t beat them all together--heck, it’s probably why he hasn’t tried anything like the Genesis Pod since, right?”

“Sure, maybe,” says Dutch, who’s been a little distracted throughout this whole conversation anyway--he was in the middle of a new painting when Mike called them up to meet.  His filtration mask is still hanging from one long-fingered brown hand and his eyes keep darting in the direction of the sheet metal wall outside the garage.

“‘ _Sure maybe’_ \--Dutch, _back me up_ ,” says Mike, mock-injured.  “Julie, Tex?”

Texas, short and broad, flame-patterned-jumpsuit-clad, claps his hands briskly together.  “Alright, Mike, you’ve only been down here for like a week--”

“A year and a half,” Chuck interjects.

“--yeah, whatever--so Texas is gonna give you the low-down on this thing.  These guys are all in, like, the same business!  I’ve been watchin’ ‘em double-cross each other and smash up buildings since before you were born, Tiny.”

“Texas,” says Mike, “we’re the same age, man…”

“The point is, no.”

“But they haven’t done _too_ much double-crossing while I’ve been in Motorcity,” says Mike.

“They kind of have,” Julie points out, peering at Mike from under glossy dark red bangs.  “Rayon...the Duke...the Duke again…”

“Hey, the Duke _owes_ me,” Mike protests.  “He won’t be any trouble for a while!”

Chuck and Dutch share a look.  Texas gives a short, unconvinced, “Uh-huh.”

Julie sighs.  “Look, Mike, it’s a good idea in theory, but when it comes down to it, they don’t trust each other.  There’s too much history.”

“Well, things are going to get worse,” says Mike stubbornly, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and stare around at them all.  “I know it all seems pretty calm right now, but Kane’ll try again.  And next time, a last-minute alliance might not be enough!”

“...So, what,” says Dutch after a moment’s thoughtful silence, “you wanna get them all together for peace talks?”

“Sure!”

“Too many conflicting interests,” Chuck mumbles, sinking back in his chair.  The others make noises of resigned agreement, not looking at Mike.  There’s a pause, and then Mike puts a hand on Chuck’s shoulder.  To Chuck’s surprise and slight concern, he’s still grinning.

“ _One_ shared interest, Chuckles,” he says.  “Motorcity.”

The others share a look--no one’s told him yet that the actual cheer on the day of reckoning was _“For_ Mike _and Motorcity”_ , and this seems like an awkward moment to bring it up, but maybe if it _is_ Mike who tries to bring them all together...it might work?  Either way, the look says, it’s easier to go along with it than it is to argue with Mike Chilton.

“How do we do this, then?” asks Julie.  “Send out a memo?   _Meet Friday at five, we’ll bring snacks?_ ”

“Did someone say snacks?” calls Jacob, appearing around the doorway with a tray in his oven-mitted hands.  “How about my yam-and-chard potato pockets?”

The smell wafts over them.

“Y’know,” says Mike quickly, “we were just about to go for a drive.  Maybe later, Jacob!”

“One for the road?”  Jacob waves one of the strange orange objects under Texas’s nose.

“Huh.  Don’t mind if I do.”

“Oh, _dude_ ,” says Chuck, watching in horror as Texas shoves a potato pocket in his mouth.

“Alright, let’s go! _Texas!!”_

“Sounds good,” says Mike, looking around as he stands up.  “Jules, you coming?”

“Actually, I have a meeting to be at,” says Julie ruefully.  “I’ll probably get fired if I’m not there, so…”

Mike frowns slightly and looks for a moment like he’s about to say something, but then he seems to think better and smiles instead.  “...Be careful, alright?”

“You too,” says Julie, and turns to head for her car, a modified police cruiser affectionately dubbed Nine Lives.  She takes longer than strictly necessary to turn her key in the lock and climb into the driver’s seat.  She knows Mike must have watched her walk away, and she just doesn’t want to meet his eyes again.  She’s pretty sure she knows what he wanted to say.

_“It’s nothing, just...don’t get too close, you know?  It’ll only make it harder in the end.”_

“A little too late for that,” says Julie under her breath, and hits the gas.

Later, settling into an ergonomic Kane Co. chair, Deluxe’s artificial afternoon sunlight pouring through the glass wall across from her, Julie wonders what the rest of the Burners would think if they could see her.  She wasn’t actually lying when she said she had a meeting to be at.  It’s just that if her friends had been imagining what she meant, this probably wouldn’t have been the first thing to pop into their heads.

Abraham Kane, sole authority and founder of Deluxe City and Kane Co., sits down across from her and says, “On time today!  That’s good.”

“I told you I’d take it seriously,” says Julie.  Privately, she wonders whether she could have gotten out of this if she’d gotten sick eating one of Jacob’s potato pockets.  It’s great that she’s getting more Kane Co. info out of these lessons, but each one is an unavoidable reminder of the pressure she’s under on both sides of her double life.

Some day, Julie thinks, it’s going to crush her.

“Have you been sleeping better, sweetie?”

“Huh?”  Julie looks up, torn abruptly from the stressful thoughts churning in the back of her mind.  “Oh--yeah, I’m doing a lot better, Dad.  Don’t worry about me.”

“I _have_ to worry,” says Kane obstinately.  “After what Chilton almost did…”

Julie blinks away the sudden, stark, adrenaline-filled memory of dangling thousands of feet above Deluxe, Mike’s hands wrapped painfully tight around hers, and manages a shrug.  “Well, he didn’t.  Things...worked out fine!”

“No, they didn’t!” her father shouts, sudden and earsplitting, and then reins himself in with a deep breath, the way he does every time he startles her with a sudden burst of intensity.  “...No.  I’m...glad I didn’t lose you, but this proves what I’ve been saying all along: Chilton is trying to destroy everything I love!  And I can’t stop him unless _I_ destroy his precious _Motorcity_.”

Julie bites the inside of her cheek, wanting to say--but unable to say-- _You know how for two nights in a row I asked you to stay in Kane Co. tower while I was sleeping because I was scared?  It wasn’t just that I was having nightmares where Mike didn’t catch me, or that I saw your pod smash into the streets of Deluxe and explode and I really thought you’d died, or because I was worried you’d get hurt again doing something crazy.  It was because I’d seen what you tried to do to my friends, my other home, and I kept imagining that if I let you go I’d wake up and they’d all be gone in the morning._

She says, “...Can we start the lesson now?”

He watches her face for a moment, then smiles a little under his ginger mustache (now starting to gray like his beard).  “That’s my girl.  Alright, where did we leave off?”

“Employees,” says Julie, trying to force a little enthusiasm into her voice, and watches as he switches from father mode to business mode.

“Good memory!  When speaking to an employee, Julie, you _maintain eye contact_ .  You have to let them know who’s in charge.  They have to _believe_ in you.  They won’t believe in you if you don’t stand your ground.”

 _But Dad, I thought you made people believe in you by having Tooley beat them up_ , offers Julie’s hindbrain.  She shuts it down.  Any other day she would be ready to argue, but with her father offering her more insight into his private business affairs every day, she can’t take the chance.

He’s still talking, animated by his passion for his ideals.  “--You can’t give them an _inch_ , do you understand?  Not to your employees and _never_ to the gutter trash in Motorcity.  Not an inch, Julie!”

Julie thinks of Red.  And the Duke.  “But...don’t you sometimes have to work _with_ your enemy?  Like...a business merger?”

Kane bursts out laughing, his usual rough, unrestrained peals.  Julie, unamused, waits for him to settle.  When he eventually does regain his composure enough to answer, there’s still a laugh in his voice.  Julie’s temper, close to the surface since the most recent battle for Motorcity, the betrayals and terror and nightmares, rises sharply in a hot rush behind her eyes.  She keeps her face blank.  “Julie, that’s an _old_ idea from when there was more than one company.  Kane Co. provides everything people need!  Our enemies can’t _give_ the people anything.”

“But they can give... _Kane Co._ things,” Julie hazards.

Her father pauses, then leans forward on the table and looks at her evenly.  

“--just because somebody is your opponent,” Julie goes on, encouraged by the spark of interest in his eyes, “--that doesn’t mean they have nothing to offer.  And--and if they think you’re working with them, they might…” _betray themselves_ , her brain supplies, in a tone alarmingly similar to her father’s.  “...give up valuable information.”

Kane looks at her for a few long moments, silent, unreadable. Julie is seconds from waving the whole thing off, trying to gloss over everything she said, when he sits back and smiles to himself.

“I think that’s enough for today’s lesson,” he says, and the sharp twist in Julie’s stomach when he smiles fondly at her vanishes before she can tell if it’s pride or sick anxiety.  “Do you have dinner plans?”

“Uh, yeah,” says Julie, a little taken aback.  “I’m eating with Claire tonight.”

He frowns, then shrugs.  “Oh.  Maybe tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, maybe!” says Julie, smiling.  And then, quickly, before he can say anything else, “Well, bye!”

Kane watches her go in impassive silence.  When the door closes behind her, he sighs through his nose, runs a hand over his slicked-back hair, and adjusts the ponytail at the base of his skull.  Then he takes a deep breath, chest swelling like an angry god’s, and bellows, _“TOOLEY!”_

There’s the sound of a distant crash as his second-in-command breaks whatever he was messing around with in the other room.  Then Tooley comes flailing through the door, stumbling in his hurry, all joints and enthusiasm.

“Yessir Mister Kane Sir!”  He salutes, grinning a grin full of crooked teeth.  Kane regards him with the same vaguely appreciative disgust he always does, and then sighs his constant disappointment and settles down in his chair.  

“Send in my next appointment.”

As Tooley thumps off, Kane pulls up a new screen and studies it.  He’s still doing this when Tooley returns, another figure in Kane Co. blue and white striding behind him.  He waits for both of them to draw level with the desk before acknowledging the newcomer’s presence, frowning down at the profile in front of him.

“Cadet Alex Harley.”

When he looks up, Alex Harley looks back at him, half-smiling.  He’s tall, at least six feet, with a thin-bladed nose, black close-cropped hair, and sleepy but startlingly blue eyes.  He looks like a cocky brat.  He’d better have a good reason for coming here.

“Mister Kane, Sir,” says Harley, “Since your recent attempt with the Genesis Pod didn’t work and I haven’t heard anything around the building about any new major plans, I’m guessing things aren’t going so well on the _destroy Motorcity_ front.  Plus, about half your leading scientists have black eyes or fractures--”

“Are you _going somewhere with this_ , Cadet?” Kane growls, narrowing his eyes.  

“Sir, I have a passion for biotechnology--I majored in it, actually--and I spend a lot of my free time in the R&D department, where I found an old project that might be useful--”

Kane sneers.   _Disappointing._  “You’re a soldier, Harley, not a scientist.  Don’t waste my time.  Tooley, take Cadet Harley to...readjust his priorities.”

Tooley guffaws and cracks his knuckles, striding forward to put a hand on Harley’s shoulder.  “Re-a-just your pry-or-teas.  That means I get to--”

“Excuse me, Sir,” says Harley.  Then he twists, drives one fist up into Tooley’s jaw, and lands another two hits to his gut before Kane’s favorite enforcer can raise a hand.  Then, flashing Kane a quick, apologetic grin, he clocks Tooley across the temple with a hammerfist and shoves him in Kane’s direction.  Tooley hits the ground in front of the desk in a groaning heap.

“If you’d let me finish, Sir,” says Harley, still perfectly polite and even, and shakes his shoulders out, shifting back and forth on the balls of his feet as the energy of the fight drains back out of him.  “--I would have told you about the performance and optimization options.”

There’s a long, frozen moment as they stare at each other, and then Kane throws back his head and lets out a harsh bark of laughter and the moment breaks.  “Very impressive!”  He says, and falls back into his swivelchair.  “Alright, you can finish.  But if you don’t get to the point, Cadet, I’ll finish Tooley’s job myself.”

Harley pauses at this, then his smile returns.  “Well, long story short, Sir, I’ve found a way to finish one of your old partner’s projects.”

Kane pauses, eyes fixed for a brief moment on a point in the distance.  Jacob.  What was even left of Jacob’s research?

“Which...project?”

“This one, Sir.”  Harley waves up a screen, on which appear scans and photos from Jacob’s original research.  Many of Jacob’s notes have been crossed out and scribbled over with new handwriting.  Kane feels some faint, residual offense at this for a moment, but shakes it off.  He remembers this idea, and he remembers why Jacob scrapped it.

“The only problem, Sir,” says Harley, “is that the tech is outdated.  I thought you might like to consider it as a possibility, though.  With our new nanotechnology and energy options, it would be easy enough for me to renovate it.”

Kane stares at the screen for a long moment, and then slowly turns his gaze up to meet Harley’s electric blue eyes.  “Cadet Harley,” he says slowly, “how would you like to be remembered as the man who led to Deluxe’s triumph over Motorcity?”

Harley raises his eyebrows, then shrugs and salutes.  “It would be a genuine honor, Sir.  Just tell me what you want me to do.”

\--

Two days later, Julie dashes into the hideout at a run around noon, almost slipping and falling as she cuts through the empty Mutt Dog kitchen.

“Ooh, sorry!” calls Chuck, appearing in the corner of her eye as she steadies herself on a counter.  “R.O.T.H. _just_ mopped that floor!”

“I’m fine,” says Julie, picking her way towards the corner table where Chuck, Texas, and Dutch are sitting.  Dutch and Chuck have just started another Co-Op level of Laser Swords III, and Texas is eating orange, powdery popcorn.  He scoots aside as Julie hops over the back of the seat to perch next to him, and offers her the bowl.  Julie, who’s famished, grabs a generous handful and shoves it into her mouth.  They taste like cheesy cardboard.

“I thought you guys would be gone,” she says, swallowing.  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re still here, but... _why_ are you still here?”

“Mikey’s doing a thing,” says Chuck vaguely, thumbs toggling his controller furiously.  Then, to Dutch, “Dude, you need a Health Potion?”

“I got this I got this,” Dutch mumbles, his attention fixed on the screen with an intensity he usually reserves for auto customizations or art. “I--yeah!”

“Hey, not cool!” says Chuck, still mashing buttons, “that one was mine!”

“I was helpin’ you out!”

“It’s called kill-stealing and it’s--”

Julie, realizing she’s not going to get anything out of these two, turns reluctantly to Texas instead.  It’s not that she doesn’t like him--well, she likes him more than she did when they first met, anyway--but asking him for information is usually a bit of a coin toss.

“Where _is_ Mike?” she asks, watching in mild fascination as another handful of orange puffs vanishes down his throat.

“Oh, what?  Tiny?  He’s writin’ a poem or somethin’,” says Texas, shrugging.  “Texas can respect that but it’s takin’ him about a year.  Hey, maybe you could help ‘im out, _you’re_ a girl.”

“Thanks, Texas,” says Julie, and goes back to watching Chuck and Dutch put aside their argument so they can focus on slaying a giant skeleton in a purple robe.  This proves entertaining for another five minutes, after which Julie’s stomach makes a noise like her car’s engine starting up.

“Alright,” she says, standing up decisively, “I’m going to find Mike and if he’s not ready to go we’re leaving for Antonio’s without him.”

Texas whoops his approval and Dutch mutters something like, _“Yeah, serve him right.”_ Even Chuck, who would have to ride with someone else if Mike stayed behind, can’t summon more than a half-hearted, “Well, I mean, Mike’s probably hungry too…”

It doesn’t take long for Julie to find him; it’s a small building and he’s talking aloud, his voice echoing up from down below.  She can’t catch individual words, but she immediately recognizes the tone of almost painful sincerity.

“Mike?”

A muffled click, a sound of quick footsteps, and Mike’s face appears from one of the lower garage doors.

“What’s up, Jules?”

“We’re all starving?” she says, shrugging.  “Everyone’s ready to go to Antonio’s!  I mean, we’ve _been_ ready for a while now.”

“Oh!  Sorry,” he says, propping himself against Mutt’s hood to look up at her.  “I was busy with something.  Tell ‘em I’m ready to go!”

“You got it, Cowboy.”  She heads back through the kitchen, a little slower this time, raising one hand to signal the rest of the Burners…

Who are...not looking at her.  Texas has put aside his snacks.  Dutch and Chuck aren’t gaming anymore.

“Mike!” Julie calls over her shoulder, eyes on everyone else’s concerned faces.  “I think you might wanna come up here instead!”

A moment’s silence, and then a pair of brown hands latch onto the edge of the pavement and a second later Mike clambers up, concern tightening his thin lips.

“What’s up?”

“I dunno,” Julie mutters, leading the way over to the table.  “Guys, what’s up?”

“It’s a message,” says Dutch, nodding to the screen hovering in front of Chuck.

“An audio message,” Chuck adds, frowning.  “Why not a video or a hologram?”

Dutch scratches his chin, watching as Chuck runs his personal virus scans.  “That’s how Hudson reached us...maybe Kane Co.’s been crackin’ down on stuff like that.  What do the stats say?”

“It _is_ from the R &D department again,” says Julie, and Chuck bobs his head in agreement as he presses the Play button.  At first, there’s only silence and everyone leans in to listen more closely.  Then--

“ _Kane is working on something huge,_ ” says the message, staticky and soft, and the panic in the voice is clear even through the bad quality and low volume.  “ _I tried to tell myself he was going to use our work for our people, but he’s--he’s a_ madman _.  Please, I need your help.  I’ll bring whatever tech I can get out.”_

“What’s your name?” asks Mike, and there’s a faint, sharp inhale from the other end of the line.  The Burners have hacked Kane’s announcement screens on no less than three different occasions, meaning that most migrating Deluxians are familiar with Mike’s voice and consequently seem slightly stunned to hear him up close and personal.

 _“D-David,”_ says the voice.   _“David Chopper.”_

“Alright, Dave,” says Mike, “stay put, we’re coming to get you.”

 _“I have a route down into Motorcity,”_ says David quickly.   _“I can give you the coordinates and I’ll meet you there in an hour.”_

Mike frowns.  “Just tell us where you are now, it’ll be safer--”

_“I have to go!”_

And with a click and a buzz of static, the conversation terminates--though not before a new window springs up with a series of numbers unfolding across it.

“Coordinates?” asks Mike, standing up.

“Well, yeah,” Chuck mumbles, one eye peering apprehensively up at his best friend through a gap in his bangs.  “But I haven’t checked where they are yet and we don’t know if all that stuff he was saying was legit or not!”

“We don’t have to,” says Mike forcefully, then softens as Chuck continues to fidget and chew on his lower lip.  “...Alright.  Jules, does any of it check out with what you know?”

“There... _are_ more and more people leaving Deluxe,” Julie says cautiously, and frowns as Mike’s face goes grim and purposeful.  “...Mike…”

“We have to get this kid out,” says Mike.  “Burners, you with me?”

Chuck groans.  Texas grins. Dutch and Julie share a long-suffering look.  Of course they are.  Everyone grabs a snack from somewhere around Mutt Dog and climbs hurriedly into their respective cars with grease on their fingers.  The coordinates flare on every dashboard, quickly converting into a red pinpoint on a map.

“That’s pretty far from our turf,” says Chuck uneasily as Mike presses the gas.  “Seems kinda suspicious…”

“You worry too much,” says Mike, flashing him a cool grin.  “He doesn’t know his way around down here, of course he’d wanna meet closer to Deluxe.  We just gotta get there before it turns into a problem!”

“A problem!” Chuck repeats, a touch of nervous laughter making his voice wobble.  “Right!  A problem!  You’re the boss, Mikey, whatever you say!”

“Then hold on tight!” Mike says, his grin widening into something more wild.  And they’re off for real, two hundred miles per hour, Chuck’s screams trailing behind them in the echoing neon-lit darkness of Motorcity.

At their usual speeds, it doesn’t take more than five minutes to reach the coordinates: one of the newer overpasses, closer to the underside of Deluxe than the old city below, narrow enough that the Burners can only drive two abreast.  Mike leads, of course, slowing to a tame sixty miles an hour as they near their destination.

He signals a halt maybe a hundred yards from David Chopper’s position.  It’s hard to see any details from this distance, but he looks young, around the same age as the Burners.  He’s wearing the same white and blue as every other Deluxe refugee they’ve taken in; in the dim light, his coat and pale skin stand out, swimming patches of white in the dark.  

As Mutt brakes, cruising to a halt, he looks up sharply.  His eyes widen at the sight of all four cars and he backs up a step, clutching his side; the Kane Co. white is stained bright red.  ” _Get back!”_ He shouts across the space between them.  His voice shakes.  “I-I’ll break it!  I will!  I only want to talk to Mike Chilton!”

Everybody’s eyes turn to Mike.  Mike looks confused, but worried; he taps his fingers on Mutt’s wheel for a second, thinking, and then sighs and cuts her engine.  

“ _Mikey_ ,” Chuck hisses as he climbs out.  

“I’ll be fine,” Mike says casually, and waves a hand.  “How about you go hang back there with the others, buddy.  Might make this guy feel better.  Okay?”

Chuck makes a noise that indicates it’s pretty much _not_ okay, but Mike is already walking forward, hands raised comforting and empty.  Chuck groans and then backs away to where the other cars are parked, one hand fidgeting on the opposite forearm where his slingshot is stored.

 _“‘Break it’?  Break_ what _?”_ Julie’s voice hisses over the comms.  No one answers; all eyes are fixed on Mike’s retreating back.

Mike Chilton has seen refugees from Deluxe before, and this kid seems to fit the bill.  They’re always afraid, unsure of what’s waiting for them below Kane’s false paradise.  Mike remembers that feeling, and as he draws closer to the newcomer he has to resist the urge to make the first move.  The guy's hunched over, but he stares up at Mike with bright blue eyes.  There’s blood spattered on his face too, around his nose and across his cheek--no bruises, though.  No cuts or scrapes.  

“Dave Chopper?” Mike asks, holding his arms wide to show his empty hands.

“I didn’t know if you’d come,” he says, one corner of his mouth lifting in what might be half a relieved smile.  Mike returns it encouragingly, looking the kid up and down.

“You look like you’ve been through the wringer,” he says.  “Come back with us and we’ll get you cleaned up, find you a good place to stay.  We’re gonna have to check your pockets first, though...no big deal, just standard procedure.  Need to make sure you didn’t bring anything bad with you from Deluxe.”

“Actually,” says the boy, glancing over his shoulder at a curve in the road, “like I said, I did bring something I brought that you should see.  I left it back that way a bit...didn’t want you guys to think I was carrying a weapon…”

“A weapon?” asks Mike, eyes widening with sudden interest.  “You got something out of Kane Co.’s R&D?  Pretty impressive, dude.”

The guy pauses, apparently caught off-guard for a moment, then says, “...Yeah, kinda.  You think you could use an edge against the stuff we’re turning out?”

“Only all the time, Davey,” says Mike, grinning.  “Lead the way.”

“What’s he _doing_?” Chuck whimpers, edging forward, the scope of his slingshot fixed on Mike and the newcomer as they become slowly more distant.

 _“Just trust Mike,”_ says Dutch.   _“The guy doesn’t seem so bad.”_

 _“Then why is he leading Mike away from us?”_ Julie asks.   _“Chuck’s right, I don’t like this.  We should go after them.”_

It’s at this point that Texas, apparently tired of these deliberations, sticks his head out of Stronghorn’s window and shouts, “Hey Tiny, we’re comin’ your way!  Tell your new pal to get over it!”

Mike sighs and glances at David.  “Sorry about him.  I’ll tell them to--”

“It’s okay,” says the kid, and suddenly Mike thinks he doesn’t look as scared and shaken as he did before.  “We’re far enough away now.”

“...Is there really a weapon?” asks Mike, one hand slowly moving towards his jacket pocket.

Chuck’s icon appears in his peripheral vision. _“Mikey!”_

“Kind of,” says David, and too late Mike sees the little device in his hand, a tiny red light flashing as he presses a button on top of it.

_“Mikey, it’s a signal beac--”_

And bots flood the air, hundreds of glowing red eyes and primed guns pointing straight at Mike, and dropping from the swarm of metal, another red and black figure limned in crackling red light, fists pulled back as energy gathers in its hands--

 _“Go!”_ Mike bellows, and they wouldn’t have, they wouldn’t have run, _never_ , but then Red lands with a snarling _BOOM_ that makes the air shake, and the asphalt between them and Mike starts to crumble.  Someone screams _“Reverse!”_ \--

The cars shoot backwards, away from the smoke and falling rocks, but something blurs between them--a figure running the other way--and Dutch hits the brakes to scramble out the door of Whiptail and dash after Chuck, shouting _“Get back here man, it’s dangerous!”_

But Chuck doesn’t stop, and he’s a step from the edge before Dutch seizes the back of his shirt and hauls him back, sending them both skidding across the pavement.  Dutch stays down, nursing a skinned elbow, but Chuck gets back up again, panting, staring wildly into the distance for any sign of the capture bots.  “Mikey! _Mikey!!_ Guys, come on, we gotta _follow_ them!”

“Where’d they go?” barks Texas, sticking his head out Stronghorn’s window.

“Back to Deluxe,” says Julie, as calmly as she can when on some level her mind is repeating _not again not again not again_ and her insides feel numb.  “They’re long gone, there’s no knowing--”

Texas ducks back inside his car, and the engine drones as he revs her up.  “Then let’s get up there!”

“No!” reply Dutch and Julie at the same time, while Chuck paces and grips the front of his shirt and heaves breaths like he just finished a marathon.

“Listen, ladies, the sooner we get goin’, the better, am I right?”

“Yeah,” says Dutch, “because our trips to Deluxe always end so well, right?”

“We’ll get him back,” says Julie, as firmly as she can ( _not again not again not again)_.  “Or--or he’ll get himself back!  I’ll look into it when I go back up, I swear!  But they’ll be expecting us now, and if we go up there--”

Texas kicks his door open and leaps out, landing a foot or two from Julie with arms folded and biceps bulging judgmentally.  “Texas ain’t afraid of no Kane Co. trap!”

“Well you _should_ be!” says Julie, panic and outrage raising the pitch of her voice.  “Because that’s how Mike got captured-- _both times!_ So why don’t we all just...calm...down.”

In the pause that follows, Julie realizes both Dutch and Texas are staring at her.   _Look them in the eye_ \--well, there are two of them, and even Texas is taller than her, so she doesn’t feel especially charismatic or leaderly, but-- _Stand your ground_.

She stands her ground, suddenly acutely aware of the sound of clattering rock and faintly creaking metal.  Dutch and Texas share a look and Julie hopes it’s a _‘She’s right, Mike will be fine’_ look, because at least that would mean they feel more confident than she does right now.

“Oh,” says Chuck into the silence.  “Oh, no, no, nonono, Mutt.”

“What?” says Dutch weakly, turning to look at him.  “What are you talking--”

“Mutt was on that section of road!” Chuck squeaks, inching closer to the smoking chasm.  “She--she must be down there somewhere.  We gotta get her back!”

“Chuck,” says Julie quietly.

“We gotta get her back--”

“Oh, we’re gonna,” says Texas, stepping forward and clapping Chuck on the back so hard that he wobbles and screams, stumbling back away from the drop.

_“Dude!”_

Texas shrugs.  “Just sayin’.”

“Well _don’t_!” Chuck yelps, clutching his chest again.  Texas grimaces and shrugs, then turns his attention back to Julie.

“So,” he says, looking her dubiously up and down, “you wanna do this all alone, huh?  I still think it’d be easier with all of us.”

“Trust me,” says Julie, glancing up at the underside of Deluxe, “it definitely wouldn’t be.”

“When we find Mike, though…” says Dutch, and looking at him, Julie sees something hard in his gentle eyes.  She nods.

“When we find Mike,” she repeats, and heads towards Nine Lives.  “I’ll let you guys know right away if I find anything, okay?  Keep your ears on.”

Chuck nods miserably.  Dutch manages a crooked smile of encouragement.  Texas huffs through his nose but ruffles her hair as she walks past him, and the gesture is weirdly grounding.  Julie takes a deep breath as she climbs into her ride, settling into the familiar pink plush and wrapping her fingers around the still-warm control column.  Less than an hour ago, the inside of her car was comfort itself, a safe space where she knew every button and lever.  Now--

Now it’s like it was last time, when nothing felt quite right, nothing felt as safe as it did before Mike…went missing.

It’s not just because their leader is gone and everyone is still raw from what happened last time, Julie thinks as she presses the gas.  It’s because it’s nearly impossible to relax or feel safe when your friend is missing, headed for some unknown, possibly terrible fate.

And it’s even worse when the architect of said fate is your own father.

Julie barely notices the drive up, the streets passing by.  She remembers to do her usual checks, but it’s mechanical by now, muscle memory, a checklist she automatically runs down.   _Activate Nine Lives’ cloaking, activate Deluxe bodysuit, apply makeup to scratches, scrub off oil, have a backstory ready…_

Her feet carry her numbly to her pod, and after setting a course for the tower she spends the trip pacing ceaselessly back and forth over the bare, matte metallic floor.

 _“Pod docked, requesting authorization,”_ says her in-home computer system.  Julie says her own name aloud, very clearly, and slips through the door before it’s even halfway open, finding herself alone in one of Kane Co. Tower’s many clean white hallways.  Where would Kane be right now?   _Think._

She finds him on one of the lowest levels, possibly returning from the cadet barracks (or from some other secret project he’s been _lying to her about_ , Julie thinks bitterly).

“Dad, hey!” she says, summoning a genuine smile somehow.  “How was work today?”

“Business as usual,” he says, popping open a Kane Co. brand water bottle.  Immediately, warning bells go off in Julie’s head.  The last time Mike was a prisoner in Deluxe, it was all over the news.  There were posters, announcements, massive plans for the final overhaul of Motorcity...Kane was even considering making it a holiday.  But this time it’s ‘business as usual?’

“Uh...that’s pretty vague,” she says, trying to keep it light.  “If I’m going to be running Kane Co., it should be...no detail too small, right?  You said you were going to start telling me more now.”

He eyes her, and not for the first time Julie has the sudden unfounded fear that somehow, just by looking at her, he’s going to figure it out.

And then he snorts and says, “It was slow enough even Tooley could explain it to you, Honey.  Want a water?”

“No thanks...not thirsty,” says Julie, her chest tightening again--because Mike is gone, because her father is keeping secrets, because...he’s right to, even if he doesn’t know it.

She does a little more digging after that--listening in on the conversations of passing Kane Co. elites, checking the trajectories of Kane Co. bots across the city--but nothing she gathers can tell her anything about where her father has decided to keep his greatest enemy.

Or tell her _why_ he’s so set on keeping it a secret.

  



	2. A New Enemy Appears!  War in Motorcity?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kane's plans remain uncharacteristically obscured, and a new player arrives on the scene, wreaking havoc and sowing discord.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New writing method: one person works on the chapter up for publishing, the other on any other point in the story. We start a playlist and swap every time four songs pass. PRODUCTIVE!! Anyway, we hope you enjoy this chapter and we're excited to keep sharing with you! Chapter titles theme: anime episode titles.

The Burners stare at the mountain of asphalt, concrete, and twisted metal.

“...Alright,” says Dutch, “where d’you think we should start?”

“Could...could R.O.T.H. lift…?”  Chuck sounds dubious.

“He could only do one chunk at a time.”  Dutch gives the pile of rubble a considering look, then sighs and shakes his head.  “--man, that would take _days._ ”

“I don’t know if we have a choice--”

“Texas has an idea,” says Texas

“Oh,” says Chuck weakly.  “Good.”

“I just _slam_ into that stuff with Stronghorn-- _K-paKAW_ \--and it all goes flying-- _wh-shaaa_ \--and we keep doin’ that until we find Mutt!”

“Uh-huh,” says Dutch, clearly unconvinced.  “What if you _hit_ Mutt?”

“I dunno, what?” says Texas, narrowing his eyes.

“Mutt did already...get crushed under a pile of rubble,” says Chuck.  “I don’t know how much more damage Stronghorn could...really do…”

He seems determined to stay positive about this thought, but the slight crack in his voice betrays him.  Texas, apparently failing to notice this subtlety, whoops and runs to his car.  “Alright, ladies, out of the way!  It’s _battering ram_ time!!”

An hour later, they’ve shifted most of the asphalt chunks off of Mutt’s hood, so dented it looks like crumpled paper, so scuffed and discolored it’s hard to see the green.

“She’ll be fine,” says Dutch, glancing at Chuck.  “Good to have her back, huh?”

Chuck shrugs half-heartedly.  “...I dunno, man.  I thought it would make me feel better if we got her out, but…”

Dutch sighs.  “Yeah, I know what you mean.  But we should bring her home anyway.  You called Jacob, right?”

Chuck nods and stands up, looking over his shoulder at the faint glow of lights above the city center.  “Should be here any--”

He’s interrupted by a familiar yowling noise, echoing between the pillars supporting the overpass.  The Burners look at each other, eyes wide, unspoken anticipation passing between them like lightning, and then all three of them run to meet Nine Lives as it skids to a halt in the gravel.

“Hey, guys,” says Julie, climbing out.  “You find Mutt yet?”

Dutch nods quickly, gesturing behind them at the half-uncovered car.  “Jacob’s comin’ to help us tow ‘er in a bit.”

“Did you...tell him?”

“How could we not?” Chuck says, sounding slightly pained.  “It’s probably only a matter of time before Kane announces it to everyone anyway…”

“I don’t know about that,” says Julie slowly, looking around at them.  “Look, I couldn’t find anything about where they’re holding Mike-- _yet_ \--but I talked to--I mean, no one in Deluxe knows about this.  Kane hasn’t even told his own employees yet.”

“But he _will_ ,” Chuck insists, and Julie thinks, _No, he won’t, because he hasn’t even told me yet._

But there’s no way she’s going to say that out loud, so she just mumbles, “I really don’t think so, Chuck.”

“Maybe he’s tryin’ to get information out of him,” says Texas knowledgeably.  “Happened to me once.  Now, Tiny ain’t no Texas, but he’ll probably do fine.  He can take his punches.”

“Hngh,” says Chuck, and Julie can’t help wincing as well--she remembers the state Mike was in the last time she visited him in a Kane Co. cell.

Fortunately, they’re spared further discomforting hypotheticals from Texas by the appearance of Sasquatch, which rumbles to a stop next to Nine Lives.  Julie’s car is completely dwarfed by one of its massive whitewall tires alone, and she can’t help the momentary urge to shout at Jacob not to run Nine Lives over.

“Where do you want ‘er?” calls the old man from his perch, peering down at them.  If his eyes and nose look a little red, no one mentions it.  Texas waves him over to the heap of wreckage and the rest of the Burners stand by, watching in silence as an energy hitch latches onto Mutt’s front bumper.  

As Jacob starts pulling, R.O.T.H. hovers down from Sasquatch and wraps his cables around Dutch, whirring and squeaking.  Dutch returns the hug gratefully, murmuring, “Hey buddy, good to see you too.”

It takes a great grinding of tires and a roar from Sasquatch, but after a taut moment of anticipation Mutt shifts a little.  After that, it gets easier.  Mutt bumps and hobbles out from her stony prison, chunks of asphalt shifting off of her as she moves.

“There we go!” calls Texas, flashing Jacob a reassuring thumbs-up.  “Almost there!”

One last tug and there she is, looking oddly small, Chuck thinks--even smaller, somehow than she did after clearing the Death Jump.

“Alright, let’s take ‘er home!” Jacob yells down, his voice thin and echoey in the space under the twisting highways.  “Chuck, why don’t you climb up here with me?”

Chuck, who had been trying with no success to heave open one of Mutt’s doors, takes a step back and stares despondently at it, not looking at Jacob.  The rest of the Burners share a look.

“Here, dude,” says Dutch, stepping forward, “lemme see if I can pry it open…”

“Let Texas _punch_ it open!” Texas suggests, shouldering Dutch aside.  “If the door comes off we can just tie it to the top and--”

“Oh--no no no!” shouts Chuck hastily, throwing himself flailingly between Texas and Mutt.  “No, it’s cool, I’ll ride with Jacob!”

“Then c’mon, I’m not gettin’ any younger here!” Jacob bawls, and Chuck, throwing a last glance at Texas to make sure he isn’t going to tear any bits off of Mutt, clambers up the passenger-side wheel and collapses in the seat next to Jacob’s.  The old man claps him on the shoulder with a knotty hand, and for a moment his expression seems almost a reflection of Chuck’s--that kind of vague, confused emptiness.  But at second glance the look seems less fresh on Jacob’s face, and more like familiar resignation.

And then Jacob hits the gas and Chuck is distracted by the familiar sensation of moving forward at a ridiculously indecent speed, now also at a ridiculously indecent height.  Behind them, there are flares of yellow, red, and green as the other Burners rev their engines.

Chuck spends the ride home staring determinedly at one of his screens, trying to ignore the surreal way Sasquatch flies over the landscape while he searches Deluxe newsfeeds.  But there’s nothing now and there’s still nothing when they roll into headquarters fifteen minutes later.  The trip probably would’ve been much shorter, Chuck reflects miserably, if they hadn’t been hauling Mutt.

When he and Jacob climb out (it takes Chuck much longer given that Jacob, despite his arthritic knees, has still not given up dropping straight from his open door to the ground), Julie and Texas are already pushing Mutt towards the garage.  The rest of them join in without speaking, until Mutt finally rattles and rocks over the threshold and settles with a rusty groan like a lame dog grateful for the rest.

Jacob vanishes into his kitchen when they get back, reappearing a minute or two later to present each of them with a cup of cold, sour lemonade.  It’s a testament to their weariness that none of the Burners refuse it and even Julie drains her cup to the bottom.  Jacob himself uncorks an ancient green bottle and seems about to swig half of it in one go when R.O.T.H. suddenly swoops down, making admonishing whirrs and chirps, and tugs it out of Jacob’s hands.  The old man lets go reluctantly, muttering, _“Yeah, I know, ten dang years, whatever…”_

R.O.T.H. deposits the bottle in the incinerator in the corner of the garage, and the Burners watch idly as it makes a godawful crunching noise, emits a cloud of acrid steam, and coughs up a warped ball of glass.  Job done, R.O.T.H. hovers back and nudges up under Jacob’s arm, settling there with heating coils purring.

“I shoulda known it was a trap,” Jacob mutters, staring despondently at Mutt’s carcass.  “It was bound to be, one’a these days…”

“It’s not your fault,” says Dutch.  “If anybody shoulda stopped him it was us, we were right there with him and we just let him walk off with that guy.”

“Yeah!” Texas interjects, dropping into a seat next to them.  “Mike’s all about savin’ people _all the time_.”

“Especially Deluxians who want out,” Julie murmurs.  

The rest of them nod, unspeaking, eyes fixed on Mutt, twisted and torn up and empty.

**\--**

Two days later, things don’t look any better.

“I’m _trying_ ,” says Julie, her voice rough with frustration and fatigue.  “But there’s no one celebrating, no prison records out of the ordinary, no one’s...telling me anything.  Either Mike escaped and just can’t get back to us for some reason, or Kane’s keeping it a complete secret that he _caught Mike Chilton again_.”

“But _why_?” asks Chuck for the hundredth time.  “Why would he, I mean--”

“I don’t know,” says Julie, as she always does.  Then, in a fit of spite, “Maybe just to drive us out of our minds wondering.”

“Or to make it look like he...ran away,” Dutch adds, pulling a face as he finishes the sentence.  “Like Kane always said he would.   _You’ll abandon these people too_ , all that crap.”

“Huh?  Oh yeah, some people are sayin’ that,” says Texas offhandedly.   _“Fifty--”_ Up go the scrapmetal dumbbells.  The rest of the Burners stare at him.

“What?”

“ _Who’s_ saying that?” asks Chuck, his voice shaking a little.

“Just people man, don’t pressure Texas while he’s lifting!”

“Great,” says Julie, standing up.  “That’s just--great!  Just what we need right now!”

“Like a kick to the head,” says Dutch.  “And people are getting restless not seein’ us on the streets…”

“ _What_ people?” says Chuck again, his voice now colored with frustration.

“You just hear chatter in Antonio’s, alright?” Dutch snaps.  “I’m not gonna name names!”

“Well, maybe you should’ve told ‘em--”

“I _did_ tell ‘em!”

“I wasn’t _done_!  Stop interrupting--”

Texas and Julie share a moment of slack-jawed silence as their voices rise.  If there were any two Burners they’d have expected to fight, it certainly wouldn’t be mild-mannered Dutch and timid Chuck.

To Julie’s relief, Texas steps between the two before it can come to blows, at least half a head shorter than either of them but brawny enough to push them away from each other with a hand on either chest.  “Hey!” he barks, eyes snapping back and forth from Dutch to Chuck, “Walk it off, dudes!  Back away from the nerd!”

Dutch glares at Texas, still breathing heavily.  “...Which one of us is the nerd?”

“Both of you!  Duh!  Now take a drive, alright?  No fighting in Papa Texas’s house!”

There’s a tense moment, but then both of the other boys relax and Julie can already see the regret on their faces.

“We’re all tense,” she says, and Chuck responds with a tiny nod without turning to look at her.  Dutch sighs and pulls Whiptail’s keys out of his pocket, spinning them around one finger.

“Good,” says Texas, satisfied, and settles back down to start bicep curls.  A moment later, Dutch heads out the door.  Julie pauses to think for a moment, then starts to follow him, reaching for Nine Lives’ keys.

“Where are you going?”  That’s Chuck, sounding horribly defeated in the absence of his anger.  That’s alright; Julie has enough burning inside her for both of them.

“Deluxe,” she says shortly.  “I’m going to ask some more questions.”

“I thought you said you’d tried everything…?”

Julie hesitates, then says carefully, “I’m going to try a different angle.  I’ll let you know if I get anything.”

As she steps through the door, she hears the faintest echo of a miserable, _“Oh.  Okay.”_

\--

Julie knows she’s pushing her luck going to Kane again, but she has to do something.  And if at first you don’t succeed (at prying the location of your friend’s prison cell out of your dad), then try, try again...

“Hey, Dad…?  Can I talk to you for a bit?”

“Daddy’s busy right now, honey.  We’re about to start the Wedding.”

“Oh,” says Julie weakly.  “Is it that time of year already?  Well, look, do you have just a couple moments?  I won’t take long, I just--”

“ _Julie-bear_ , there are three hundred people waiting to be joined in holy matrimony here.”

“And you don’t think that’s kind of _weird_?” asks Julie, momentarily distracted.  “Wouldn’t it just be better to, I don’t know, let people get married whenever they want?  To whoever they want?”

“Julie, let’s not have this talk again,” says Kane testily.  “The screenings only eliminate about a hundred couples a year, and only then because the compatibility analysis says they’re a bad match!”  He pauses and gives her a sharp, searching look.  “Any particular reason why you’re so interested in this all of a sudden?”

“No!” says Julie, thinking, _I can’t deal with this right now.  I just can’t._

“There isn’t a particular Deluxe boy you have your eye on?”

“Oh look, Dad, they’re getting kind of restless,” says Julie, pointing to the screens where a hundred and fifty Deluxian couples in mandatory Kane Co. Wedding apparel are shifting from side to side and giving each other nervous looks.  “Maybe you should--”

“Because you know,” says Kane, ignoring this, “if you _did_ have your eye on someone, I would like to _meet_ him.”

“Well, there isn’t anyone,” says Julie, profoundly glad that this is the case.  “And anyway, what would you do, interrogate him?”  She tries to laugh, as though it’s actually a funny joke, but it comes out weak and trails off quickly.

“Interrogate?  No...but you do have to know how to get direct answers out of people, Julie,” says Kane, and grins.  Julie’s stomach lurches.  “... _Especially_ the ones that don’t want to give you those answers.”

“Dad--”

“Julie,” Kane says, gentle but utterly unyielding, and turns away, back to the crowd of anxious Deluxians below him.  “I have a ceremony to run.”

And just like that, she’s dismissed, and there’s nothing else left to say.

\--

Life goes on, in a way.  The Burners don’t get out much, but even if they’d felt up to it, Kane hasn’t sent a single bot down to Motorcity in days.  Something is wrong, something’s changed from the last time Mike was taken, but there isn’t a single clue as to _what_.  The best they can do is wait on tenterhooks for the other shoe to drop.

A week later, it does.  The pictures are unbelievable, but undeniable; half of the Duke’s mansion is a smoldering wreckage, and the man himself isn’t looking much better.

“And _here_ ,” says Chuck, “is some footage from a security camera by the Duke’s mansion…”

“Who’s he shouting at?” inquires Texas through a mouthful of nachos.

“Rayon, I think,” says Chuck, pulling back his bangs on one side to peer more closely at the screen.  “Wish I could just _hear_ what he’s saying…”

“ _Rayon_ didn’t do this, did he?” says Dutch.  “Hey, look, you get that lip-reading software to work yet?”

Chuck makes a strangled noise of uncertainty and tilts one flat hand back and forth with frenetic energy.

“Not so much, huh?”

“Uh, haha, no.”

“Well, it’s worth a try,” says Julie impatiently, sliding closer to tap a few keys.  “Here, let’s at least give it a shot.  Can’t hurt, right?”

“Yeah, but--well...never mind…”

A little _Initiating_ window pops up.  A loading bar fills. The other three burners lean closer to watch the subtitle box that just appeared at the bottom of the video.

“How’s it gonna get Rayon?” Texas objects, narrowing his eyes.  “We can’t even see his face!”

“Even just half the conversation could give us some info,” Dutch mutters.  “Here, look--”

**_HOW DO YOU AND A WIGGLE BLUE BURNS DO SMACK MAMA_ **

There’s a pause.  Slowly, Chuck lets his head fall into his hands.  Then, for the first time since Mike was taken, Dutch, Texas, and Julie burst into laughter.  Chuck groans into his hands, but then Dutch throws an arm over his shoulders and Texas ruffles his hair with a cheese-sticky hand and he manages a tiny chuckle.  On the screen, the Duke’s subtitles continue, **_HEWLETT YUCK SNAKE ONE OF YOUR CARS_** and this time even Chuck bursts out in uncontrollable laughter as on-screen the Duke gestures emphatically at Rayon, red with fury.

“I--I think it almost got that one right!” Dutch wheezes, “But _hewlett--hewlett yuck--”_

“ _Hewlett yuck snake!”_ Julie squeaks, paralyzed with laughter.

After five minutes, most of them are draped over the scratched leather seats, breathless and weak and in Texas’s case, choking on nachos.  Around this time, the Duke’s rant takes a dramatic pause, and in the relieved silence little gasps and high-pitched giggles spiral up from under the table.  Texas coughs and hacks up the last of the chip.  Briefly, everything subsides into gentle sighs.

And then **_ALL GHETTO A BOTTOM FIST KEBAB_** scrolls across the screen, and Dutch howls and Texas starts guffawing and pointing at Dutch, and when Chuck and Julie finally haul themselves upright to look at the screens, they immediately collapse again.

It finally stops when the pizza arrives and they’ve already watched the recording twice over.  Everyone is too tired to laugh anymore, and too hungry to talk, so they eat until all that’s left is the grease stains on the cardboard.  It doesn’t feel quite like it did before, but somehow there’s a feeling a little like hope in the air.  Mike’s out there somewhere, says the feeling.  He’s out there and we’ll find him.

“...Maybe we should go and do some recon about this whole Duke thing first, though,” says Dutch, idly tracing tomato sauce designs on a napkin.

“But... _Mike_ ,” says Texas.  “ _Duh_.”

“I know, I know!  But we don’t have any leads on that and Mike wouldn’t want us to abandon Motorcity just to go looking for him!”

The words hang awkwardly in the air, the way every “if-Mike-were-here” statement has ever since he was taken.

“Mike isn’t here,” Chuck points out, quiet and miserable, like he does every time.

“So we should stop caring about what he would want?” snaps Dutch, spreading his hands wide.

“Yeah!” says Texas suddenly, swatting down the hand closest to him.  “Start carin’ what Texas wants!  I say I lead a mission to rescue Mike _and_ do some crazy spy stuff on that Duke guy!  Texas has _got_ this.  Hwa-yaa _aaahhh_.”

“That’s impossible!” says Chuck, staring slack-mouthed at Texas.  “I mean, for one thing, we _don’t know where Mike is_ and also there’s no way you could do both of those things on one mission!  You need to _plan_ it, you need to--”

“Actually,” says Julie, “why don’t we split it up for now?”

Texas pauses in the middle of a series of exuberant knifehand chops.  “ _Ka-_ huh?”

Julie takes a deep breath, marshalling her thoughts, and then sits forward, looking around the table.  “I was just thinking...we haven’t been able to do much on our own, but maybe if Chuck and I work together on finding Mike, we’ll actually get results.  Having somebody to bounce ideas off of can be really helpful--Claire helps me with my hacking sometimes and she doesn’t even know anything about computers, so if it’s me and Chuck we might really get somewhere.  And you guys can ask around about Rayon and the Duke.”

“Me and... _Texas_?” says Dutch skeptically.  “He’s not really our...people person.”

“Hey, you wanna say that to my face?”

The other three Burners stare at Texas for a moment.

“He’ll be helpful if things get dicey,” says Julie.

“He might _make_ things dicey,” Dutch retorts, sitting forward.  Julie meets his gaze with a steady one of her own and slowly he settles back, breathing out through his nose.  “We can make it work,” he says with a rueful grin.

“Jessie takin’ _charge_ ,” says Texas, approvingly.  “I can respect that.  But listen up, as my second in command you gotta listen to my plans, alright?”

_Dad would insult him._

_Mike would indulge him._

Julie isn’t her father or Mike, so she says, “Why don’t you work on it with Dutch?”

She leaves them arguing and distracted and scoots over towards Chuck instead.  He’s staring at his hands, which are knotted up and fidgeting on the tabletop.  He doesn’t seem to notice she’s there until she clears her throat gently and he jumps and whips around.

“...I know you got your car up and working again,” she says, and watches Chuck’s face fall even further at the reminder.  Mm.  Yeah, she’s starting to get the idea that her theory about Chuck’s car and the race with the Duke is more credible than she thought.  The thought of driving and cars in general seem to make him completely miserable and more than a little bit terrified.  

All the more reason to keep him from driving right now.  Besides, they need his hands elsewhere.

“I know you can drive yourself,” she amends, and Chuck grins a very fake grin and makes a noncommittal sound of agreement.  “--but would you mind, uh...hitching a ride in Nine Lives instead?”

Chuck’s shoulders slump as he sighs in transparent relief--he notices her looking at him a second later and adds “--I mean, sure if you...if you _need_ me to…” like he can pass it off as disappointment.  Julie almost has to smile.

“We’re going to need you,” she says, and wonders if this is what Mike would say.  “Even more than we already did.  So I guess...if we need to go somewhere, I’ll do the driving, you do the digging?  I...I know it’ll be a little bit weird, getting--getting used to Nine Lives, but it’ll be easier to do your thing if your hands are free.”

“...Yeah,” says Chuck, and looks down at his hands on the tabletop, tracing a fingertip in slow, aimless lines over the bony, red knuckles of his other hand.  “...S _ure._ ”

Julie isn’t Mike, can’t just suddenly start throwing her arm around people and pulling them in for hugs.  So instead she reaches out and pats him once, awkward and glancing on one hunched shoulder.  Chuck jerks a little and sits up to glance at her.  Encouraged, Julie pats again and then pulls her hand away.

“Sure,” says Chuck again, a little bit stronger, and sits back in his seat, taking a deep breath.  “Okay.  Uh...so when are we gonna start?”

“Right now,” says Julie.  “Dutch, Texas...who do you guys want to talk to first?”

The two of them watch the Duke silently screaming for a couple of seconds.

“...Rayon first?” says Dutch.

“Oh yeah,” says Texas.

Five minutes later, Stronghorn and Whiptail are ready to go and they’ve confirmed their route to the Skylark Motel.  Like a lot of other things, it’s changed in recent months.  The overpass they usually use was destroyed by Kane’s grunt-bots a week before Mike was taken, so they have to take the long way around.  The Skylarks haven’t always been 100% reliable, but compared to the Duke of Detroit, the Mama’s Boys or any of the other more volatile gangs who’ve cut up the street of Motorcity, they’re downright dependable.

Not that that makes Dutch feel much better, but hey.  At least they don’t have to go talk to the Duke yet.

“Okay,” he says, and takes a sharp turn past a wall covered in graffiti.  A huge block number “1” and a flock of circling blue swirls that might be birds. Not bad, but not how Dutch would’ve put it together.  The number looks kinda cramped and the birds wouldn’t be recognizable if he didn’t know exactly whose territory they were heading into.   “Now, just let me do the talkin’.  Okay?”

“ _Huh_?”  Texas sounds distracted.  Dutch groans and brakes a little bit, pulling back enough to push into Texas’s line of sight.

“I said _let me do the talking_.”

“ _Talkin’?!  You can talk all you want, Texas’ll take care of bustin’ in with AWESOME MUAY THAI--_ ”

“No!  Dude, no muay thai!  We’re just gonna talk!”

In his rearview Texas deflates a little, frowning.  “... _Lame.  We could take ‘em.”_

“We could _what_?  Do you know how many guys he’s got in his gang?”

“ _Uhhhhh not enough to take on Texas?_ ”

This is pointless.  Dutch lets that one slide and speeds up again, looking up as the towering, twisted tree that grows through the Skylark Motel appears through derelict buildings.  “Just let me handle it, okay?  And if somebody attacks us, _then_ you can go nuts.”

“ _Sounds like a plan_ ,” says Texas, and brakes a little as they coast up to the motel’s gates.  “ _Heh.  Ladies first._ ”

There are a lot more men in black suits hanging around the Skylark Motel than usual.  They turn and watch as Dutch and Texas roll into the courtyard, hands hovering over concealed holsters, faces impassive behind their mirrored black glasses.  The Burners climb out of their cars--a familiar, sharply-dressed figure is already striding across the courtyard toward them, his pitch-black suit cutting a hole out of the neon lights.  

Rayon holds up a hand as he walks forward; the guards around them murmur uneasily and then stand down.  Rayon smiles a little to himself and then looks back to the Burners and crosses his arms as his lieutenants come to a sharp halt on either side of him, framing the number “1” on the back of his suit coat with their own “2” and “3”.

“Hey!”  Texas stalls, snaps his fingers a couple of times and then concludes, “--Hotel...suit guys!”

“Burners,” Rayon acknowledges, sounding amused, and straightens his tie, vivid sky-blue against the brown of his skin and the black of his suit.  “Been a while.”   _Without Mike running deliveries for us_ , he doesn’t say.  “What can I do for you?”

“Heard you had some trouble that might need lookin’ into,” says Dutch, and doesn’t wince as Rayon glances at him sharply, smile falling a little.  “We’re just lookin’ for the facts, man.  So...what?  The Duke says he saw one of your cars?”

Rayon’s brows contract.  “The _Duke_ doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he says sharply. “We’re in no position to attack him, even if we wanted to.  We just got hit the other night!  One of _our_ cars has been missing ever since, and now it’s a smoking wreck on one of the Duke’s trash heaps.  Why do you think he blames us?”

“You know we’d rather trust you than the Duke,” says Dutch, raising his hands placatingly.  “I mean, we all remember that whole let’s-frame-the-Burners thing.  But we’ve been waiting for Kane to make some kind of move--”

“And you think _this_ is it?” Rayon interrupts, lowering his shades to give Dutch a long, skeptical look.  “You kids…”

“Hey!!  We ain’t _kids_ ,” snaps Texas, planting his hands on his hips.

“Coulda fooled me,” says Rayon, and has to take a sharp step back as Texas throws a quick knifehand his way.  2 and 3 cock their guns and shout overlapping warnings along the lines of _Hands off Mister Rayon!!_

“Easy, dude!” hisses Dutch, grabbing a double fistful of the back of Texas’s jumpsuit and hauling him back.  Rayon watches impassively until Texas finally settles down into a huffy standstill, then sighs and moves forward again, ignoring his lieutenants’ objections.

“Listen,” he says, “I appreciate you guys takin’ initiative here.  It’s what Mike would’ve done, and hopefully we’ll see him home again soon.  But Kane was never the only one raising hell in Motorcity.  You find any evidence to say he’s responsible for this mess, you tell me right away.  Until then, our prime suspect is the Duke.”  He pushes his shades back up the bridge of his nose.  “...You’re thinkin’ of going to talk to him next, aren’t you?”

“...We were thinkin’ about it,” Dutch admits.  Rayon sighs.

“I wouldn’t,” he says.  “Take my word for it.  Last time I heard, he was blowin’ stuff up and shootin’ at anybody who comes near his mansion.  Doesn’t make him look any less suspicious, if you ask me.”

“Okay,” says Dutch, while Texas grumbles and makes soft _ka-chaw_ noises under his breath.  “Sure.  But...you’re not gonna start a war or anything, are you?”

“Not yet,” says Rayon, and it’s clear from his tone that it’s the best they’re going to get for the moment.

\--

Julie and Chuck are neck-deep in Kane Co. prison records, surrounded by junk food wrappers and discarded cups of tea and coffee, and it’s been fifteen straight minutes of nothing but the sound of tapping keys and beeping screens.  When Chuck speaks, Julie starts and actually gasps aloud--she’d practically forgotten he was there.

“You already checked for his name, right?”

Julie blinks--she didn’t realize how long it’d been, and she has to stop and rub her eyes as they burn, dry.  “I--yeah.  And ‘Burner’ and ‘Motorcity’, all the keywords I could think of.  They’re not making it that easy on us.  I don’t see any new prisoners in the actual tower, though, for what that’s worth.  There’s only a couple of detention cells in there, and none of them have been filled in the last month, so wherever they’re putting him it’s not the same as last time.”

Chuck grumbles uncomfortably.  “That’s not too surprising.  I mean, he got himself out last time.  Kane’s a lotta things, but he’s not stupid.” He sits back, scrubs at his face roughly and takes a deep breath.  “...They gotta know we’re looking, though--look, there’s six or seven detention centers shuffling around all their prisoners and sending out chatter about ‘classified’ cells--”

“There’s more?”  Julie scoots her hair over.  “I just cracked into one of those, the cell was actually empty.”

“I got some guy who made his own clothes and tried to distribute flowers, a lady who tried to get to Motorcity and got caught, and another empty cell.”  Chuck frowns at his screen, brushing his hair momentarily out of his eyes to reveal a tired, frustrated squint and bloodshot eyes.  “...So he knows we’ve got hackers down here.  He knows we’re looking for Mike and--you still haven’t heard anything?  He hasn’t told _anybody_?”

“Not a word.”  Julie sighs and flags another signal irrelevant--twenty minutes hammering away at Kane Co.’s security protocols for another empty decoy cell.  “There has to be a faster way to do this.  We’ll never find him at this rate.”

“I know.”  Chuck has multiple screens open, jumping from keyboard to keyboard, occasionally stopping to take a gulp of Jacob’s awful coffee.  When Julie catches a glimpse of his eyes under his bangs, they’re fixed on his screens with exhausted, dogged focus.  “But--what else are we gonna do?  Whoever scrambled these knew what they were doing.”

“We could--” and then Julie pauses, because a message notification just lit up bright and blinking at the corner of her screen.  “...huh?”

“What?”  Chuck glances over hopefully.  “You find something?”

“No--hang on,” says Julie, turning aside.  “Call from Claire.”

“Th _at’s_ cool!” Chuck squeaks, jolting upright and accidentally keymashing in the middle of a line of code.  “Uh, say hi for me?  Or something?  Something cool--”

_“Julie, hey!”_

Julie smiles and waves.  “Hey, Claire, what’s up?  Chuck says--”

 _“Julie, listen, I was just talking to Foxy and--well,_ maybe _she wouldn’t want me to say anything, but I got kinda worried…”_

Julie listens.  And listens.  And gently pushes Chuck back when he tries to lean into the picture.  And then, when Claire’s told her everything, Julie calls Texas.

\--

Dutch and Texas are in the middle of a mostly one-sided argument about the merits of maybe storming the _Duke_ with muay thai butt-kickings, since Rayon didn’t need any, when Julie’s icon pops up next to Dutch, square and staticky and as worried as a little cartoon with cat ears can look.

_“Guys, something’s--”_

“Hey lady, good news!” shouts Texas, cutting her off.  “We got that thing all handled, you saved Mike yet?”

 _“We got interrupted,”_ says Chuck’s icon, winking into existence next to Julie’s. _“There’s something going down at the Mama’s Boys arena now.”_

Texas looks suddenly uncertain.  “Wait, you sure?  They don’t exactly like me there--probably because I totally kicked their butts last time--”

 _“You lost, dude,”_ says Dutch.

“Yeah, because I was saving my bro _R.O.T.H._ ,” says Texas, wounded.  “But other than that I totally kicked their butts.”

“Anyway,” Julie says, loud and pointed over Dutch’s continued objections, _“they’re blaming it on the Amazons.”_

 _“Let me guess,”_ says Dutch wearily, _“the Amazons swear it wasn’t them.”_

 _“Yeah, but they might go after each other for real if the arguing keeps up,”_ says Julie.   _“Just...check it out, will you?”_

 _“Sure,”_ says Dutch.  Texas snorts and cracks his neck.

“Thanks,” says Julie, and blips out of existence.

The Mama’s Boys have their cars pulled up in a circle with a good old-fashioned Motorcity trash fire going in the middle when Dutch and Texas pull up, but they all get up and hop out of the ring to gang up when Texas gets out of his car.  Texas glances back at Dutch.  Dutch takes a deep breath, bracing himself for the inevitable, and climbs out too, following him into the lurid neon-pink glow from the Mama’s Boys’ hotrods.

“Weeeell well well if it ain’t our _good buddy_ Tex-ass!”  Junior drawls, front and center of the gang as usual, and grins a grin that’s all snaggled teeth and braces, hooking his thumbs through the straps of his overalls.  “How’s it shakin’, bro-mi-go?”

“It’s shakin’ pretty good,” says Texas.  He’s got a hand on his gunchucks.  Yeah, they didn’t exactly part with these guys on the best of terms last time they saw each other.  Texas wrecking their show, beating their boss in his own round-up...it was pretty awesome, but Dutch wouldn’t be surprised if they were holding a grudge.

“You lookin’ for a fight?”  one of the other Mama’s Boys glowers at them.  Texas snorts.

“Yeah, like you guys could--”

“We heard somethin’ was up over at your end of town,” Dutch cuts in hurriedly before Texas can finish whatever undoubtedly inflammatory thing he was about to say.  “Just comin’ around to check it out.”

The gang regards them through narrowed eyes for a few seconds, and then Junior crosses his arms.  

“We gotta go conjugate ourselves,” he says, and turns sharply on his heel before Dutch can ask what that actually means, vaulting the hood of one of the cars to slide into the ring in the middle. The others follow him, and they hunker down in intense discussion.

“...Yeah,” says Dutch, watching them mutter and throw suspicious glances over their shoulders at the Burners and their cars.  “There’s _definitely_ some kinda--”

“ _Dutch_?”

A hovering icon pops up, blue and brown with round, dark eyes.  Dutch jumps, startled, then brightens as he recognizes the icon and voice, smiling wide for the first time in what feels like weeks.  

“Tennie!  Man, I am _so_ glad to hear your voice, you got no idea.  Texas, I got a call.  You’ll be fine, right?”

“Wait!  Dutch, don’t ditch me!”

“I’ll be right back!” Dutch hisses.  “It’s Tennie!”

“UH, I’m your _bro_ ,” says Texas, scandalized.

“Just a second!  Tennie, hey, what’s up?”

_“Just thought--was that Texas?”_

Dutch’s heart sinks a fraction.  “Uh, yeah.  You called me to ask about Texas?”

She laughs, and his heart rises again, accompanied by a few flips from his stomach.   _“No, I just don’t know what you guys are up to...wanted to make sure we could talk.  You know, without being interrupted or anything.”_

Dutch glances over at Texas.  The Mama’s Boys are gathered closer now, drawling their incomprehensible nonsense, but nobody is shouting and Texas’s hand has dropped away from his gunchucks.  “I think we’re cool,” says Dutch, relieved.  “So, what’d you want?”

_“Well, you haven’t been over for a while and--I’d understand if you don’t wanna right now…”_

“Why--” Dutch starts, but swallows the word as the obvious answer presents itself.   _Mike._ He’d almost forgotten with the investigation to occupy him.  He shakes his head roughly and manages, “Uh, yeah, that’s...that sounds good!  It has been a while, huh?”

 _“Yeah!”_ She sounds relieved.   _“So, half an hour?”_

"Sure.  See you then, Tennie.”

_“Bye Dutch.”_

As her icon vanishes, Dutch takes a moment to marvel at how refreshed he feels.  He hasn’t heard her voice in over a week.  He should have talked to her sooner.

“Texas!” he calls, raising one hand.  “Get over here, man!”

“Well lookie here, boys!” drawls Junior.  “It’s the Crying Dutch-maaannn!”

“What,” says Dutch.

“You hear about the odds on this here up-and-comin’ showdown hoedown?”

“Man, I don’t even know what that means.”

“Means The Duke’s Dudes and Foxy’s Chicks are gonna go at it soon and everyone’s gotta pick sides!  And _we_ …”--Junior jabs both pointer fingers at a neon-lit chalkboard on the wall--“...got the odds figured out!”

Dutch feels his jaw drop.  It takes him a moment to get it moving again.  “You…” he tries, and then swallows hard.  “You’re--taking _bets_?”

“You _bet_!” says one of the other Mama’s Boys, and all of them explode in nasal howls of laughter.

“Of all the...you get anything out of ‘em?” Dutch mutters to Texas under the cover of the gang’s clamor.

“What?  Oh.  Yeah.  I guess that Foxy chick was here and yelled a lot--like, a _lot_ \--and now she’s gone.”

“Gone where?  What’d she _say_?”

“There was lots of yelling, man, that’s all I got!  Get off Texas’s back!”

Dutch breathes out hard through his nose.  “Okay.  Well.  Looks like they got a good enough motive, but it’s not like they’re gonna tell us anything.  We can snoop later, let’s get back to the others.”

“Uh, yeah, whatever.”

“No, _not_ whatever!” Dutch snaps, but Texas is already loping back to Stronghorn.   _Tennie,_ thinks Dutch, dragging his hands over his face.   _You’re gonna go see Tennie again soon._

Which reminds him, he hasn’t let Texas know about that particular detail of his call with her.  Well, he doesn’t need to, does he?

Except that if Texas doesn’t come, it’s just going to be Dutch, Tennie, and...her dad Bracket.  Dutch likes him, and they get along okay when they’re talking engineering, but he can tell Bracket is still wary of the danger that seems to follow the Burners like a curse.  As long as Bracket thinks his daughter isn’t safe with Dutch, he’s not going to approve of their totally-definitely-not-dates, and as long as he doesn’t approve Dutch would rather play it safe.  Bracket is an absolute mountain of a man; he’s usually carrying at least one heavy wrench somewhere on his person, and even if he doesn’t happen to have one his hands are probably big enough to twist Dutch’s head right off his shoulders.

Dutch shivers and opens a comm link to the rest of the Burners as he climbs into Whiptail.  The more, the merrier.  Or...safer.

“What’s up, guys?”

 _“Nothing much,”_ says Julie.  Chuck just groans.

“Well,” says Dutch, forcing a little extra cheer into his voice, “--sounds like you guys could use a pick-me-up!  Wanna come visit Tennie with me?”

 _“I dunno,”_ says Chuck warily. _“Nothing good ever happens when we hang at the Cablers’ Colony.”_

“Seems like nothing good ever happens _anywhere_ we go,” says Dutch pointedly.  “C’mon.  If you guys meet us at the Ambassador Bridge, we can all go to the Cablers’ colony from there.”

 _"Sounds good,”_ Julie replies.   _“Chuck, you, uh, wanna ride with me?"_

A nervous chuckle from the other icon.   _“Ahah, well, pfff, sure, I guess.”_

_“You don’t have to if you--”_

_“Coming!”_

They wink out and Dutch sighs.  Finally, some peace and--

 _“So, who do_ you _think is gonna win this shindig?”_

Texas.

“I dunno,” says Dutch offhand, then, more sharply, “Hey, you weren’t listening to those guys, were you?”

_“...Maybe.”_

“Seriously?!”

 _“What?!  The Duke versus that Fox lady?  Who_ wouldn’t _wanna get in on that action?”_

“Don’t say it like that.”

 _“HEY.  All I’m tryin’ to get at is, there’s a_ buttload _of awesome stuff in the pool!”_

 _“Wait,”_ says Chuck, _“Are you saying...you’re betting on who’s gonna win?”_

Julie pops up as well, appalled. _“We’re trying to_ stop _them from fighting!”_

 _“So you’re saying I should bet on that instead?”_ asks Texas dubiously.   _"I dunno, I don’t think they’d jump for it, guys.”_

“You shouldn’t be bettin’ at all!” Dutch says, taking one hand off the wheel to gesticulate indignantly.

 _“Exactly,”_ says Julie.  _“Sorry, Texas, but--”_

“What are the odds on the Duke?” asks Chuck distantly.  “‘Cause I’d figure--”

_“Chuck!!”_

“Sorry, sorry!”

 _“Hey,_ nice _!  I can get you in the pool if you--”_

“Texas!!”

_“Fine, fine!”_

Dutch massages his forehead.  “Just...tell me you didn’t bet Stronghorn again.”

 _“I didn’t bet Stronghorn again,”_ says Texas.

There’s a pause.

 _“You know what?  I don’t want to know,”_ says Julie.  Dutch and Chuck mumble their agreement.

_“...Okay, but by the way, you guys can’t tell me what to do.”_

“Texas, can’t you drop it?”

 _“No, listen, this is important!  One of us has gotta be leader now,”_ Texas insists.   _“So now we hash it out!  Also, it’s me.”_

 _“Maybe we should decide in a way that actually makes sense,”_ says Julie tensely.   _“Like...we each take a turn trying to deal with this stuff our way, and whoever makes it work best can be ‘leader’, if it’s really such a big deal.”_

 _“If Mike isn’t back soon,”_ Chuck adds, and the rest of the Burners hasten to agree-- _”Yeah.” “You’re right, Chuck.” “Tiny’s pretty good at gettin’ out of places.”_

The bridge is coming up ahead of them, the new reinforced struts gleaming in the darkness, and Dutch checks his rearview mirror--yep, there’s Nine Lives.  He’s just about to flash his lights in greeting when something ahead of him catches his eye instead.

“Uh, guys...you seein’ this?”

 _“Seeing what?”_ asks Chuck apprehensively.

“There’s…”  Dutch slows a little, peering through the mist.  “There’s someone on the bridge…”

There was already fear sparking at the base of his skull, but there’s something eerily familiar about the blue-and-white shadow.  In his mirror, he sees Julie stop abruptly.  

_“Is that--Red?”_

“If it is, he changed his color scheme,” Dutch mutters, but he’s reaching for his omnitool.  “Let’s just play it cool and--”

Stronghorn flashes past him with a whirring hum--Dutch sees Texas’s mouth open in a yell a split second before it roars over the radio.   _“WHOEVER HE IS HE’S GOIN’_ DOWN!! _TEXAAAAAAuhhf--!  Whoa!”_  The figure in blue and white times its jump perfectly and lands on Stronghorn’s hood, balancing in a deep crouch.  Texas’s icon grunts as he jerks the wheel and throws his car into a spin--the guy on his hood hangs on gamely.

“Texas!”  Dutch swerves forward with a familiar juddering buzz, and Whiptail’s laser cuts a sharp slice across their attacker’s legs--

...where their attacker used to be.  He jumps, light on his feet, grabs some almost invisible ridge in Stronghorn’s chassis and comes down hanging on the side like a gargoyle, feet braced on the ledge of the window.  There’s a heavy _CRACK_ as one booted foot smashes through Stronghorn’s driver-side window, and Texas’s icon starts on half a yell and then winks out as its owner is dragged halfway out the window by a white-gloved hand, twisting and struggling to get a good angle for a punch.  Dutch brakes hard and Stronghorn zig-zags across the road, swerving wildly as Texas’s kicking legs glance off of screens and buttons.  The man in white bends backward to avoid a fist, hanging on with one hand, and then snaps back and slams Texas in the face with an elbow.  

Texas’s foot is off the gas; Stronghorn turns and skids and rattles to a halt, groaning and swaying as she comes within inches of rolling onto her side.  Texas finds purchase, plants his head in his opponent’s stomach and kicks out of his window, slamming them both out onto the asphalt.

Julie’s icon reappears as the fight continues, with no opening for Dutch to fire without hitting Texas.   _“Chuck’s on foot, he’ll cover you guys with his slingshot!”_

“Wait, what about you?” Dutch shouts, but Julie’s already gone.  He growls in frustration, looks from Texas and his opponent to the keys that would activate his weapons array, then back again--and comes to a decision.  A moment later he’s out of his car and running, shouting,  “Hey you! Blue!”

The man in Kane Co. colors looks up, cocks his head to one side and then raises a hand and makes a single, clear gesture.   _Come on._  And then, with almost elegant ease, he sidekicks Texas in the gut, knocking him to the ground.

On a pile of wreckage far down the bridge, Chuck clambers up onto a slab of asphalt and pulls his slingshot, scanning the fight and looking for an opening, but Texas is back up and darting around “Blue”, throwing punches and crowing battle-cries, and Blue is…

...Blue is _fast._  He’s faster than Red, catching every punch, blocking every blow, and he makes it look _easy_ .  And there’s something about the way he moves, bouncing light on his feet, swinging from side to side, that makes it almost seem like he’s having _fun_.  It feels like mockery, way more than Red’s barrage of aggressive, hateful jabs.

Texas flips, ducks, and comes up firing blasts from his gunchucks, but impossibly, Blue slips between them, turning back and forth, once even twirling on his toes.  Dutch lunges in, trying to take him by surprise, but Blue skips back away from the punch, braces his feet on the cracked ground and slams his fists together.  

The whole bridge rattles.  A noise like distant thunder shudders through the rubble under Chuck’s feet as Dutch goes flying off his feet, blasted back by invisible shockwaves.  Blue rolls his neck, gauntlets throbbing with steady, neon pulses of blue light, and spreads his arms.   _Is that all you got?_

 _“Julie!”_ Chuck manages, staring petrified through the sights of his slingshot, “Now would be a really good time to help out!”

“ _I_ can’t,” says Julie, her icon bobbing with the force of her words.   _“If I can’t let Red see me, this guy can’t either!”_

“He doesn’t _have_ to see you, we just need to get out of this!” Chuck shouts ( _draw-release-draw-release-draw-holyshitdidIjust hit him)_

Blue turns, one hand raised to the side of his head, where a green bolt from Chuck’s slingshot left a smoking scorchmark.  Then, with a terrible, inexorable certainty, he starts to walk in Chuck’s direction.  Trying his hardest to ignore the way every nerve is keening for him to _RUN AWAY RUN AWAY NOW RUN AWAY FAST_ , Chuck swallows, levels his slingshot at the blank white-and-blue mask with a scream of terror-fueled bravado, and keeps firing shots.  

The first one grazes Blue’s shoulder, but after that he starts to dodge from side to side, speeding up with every step.  Texas and Dutch are running after him, but one half of Texas’s gunchucks is busted and Dutch’s hastily-thrown bolas goes skittering harmlessly to one side and Blue is thirty feet from Chuck and closing--

 _“Eyes on!!”_ screams Julie’s voice in every Burner’s ears.  Texas and Dutch glance up then throw themselves to the ground, covering their heads with their hands.

And then Nine Lives comes screaming out of the mist and sends Blue flying fifteen feet in the air.  One leg smacks into a streetlight as he falls, sending him spinning out of control for an ungainly landing on the pavement.  By the time he has the presence of mind to roll over, Chuck has already thrown himself wildly through Nine Lives’ passenger door and Texas and Dutch are revving their respective engines.

“I’m gonna throw up some cover for us so you better be ready to go!” shouts Julie, as in the rearview mirror Blue stumbles to his feet.  The leg that hit the light seems unwilling to support his weight--a welcome handicap.

Chuck looks frantically from their opponent to Julie’s set, steely expression.  “You think we can lose hiiiiaaa _aaaaAAAAAAAHHHH_ \--!!”

As it turns out, it’s almost as harrowing to drive with Julie as it is with Mike.  As Chuck screams and clings to his seat for dear life, the Burners skid forward and the vents behind Julie’s front wheels pour black smoke.

And they drive and drive, and Blue isn’t following.  Chuck wants to head back to the safety of headquarters, but Dutch is set on seeing Tennie again, and even shaken as they all are from the fight, it sounds like a good idea.  Being around friends, maybe having some of Bracket's home cooking...even Chuck agrees eventually that it’d be nice just to be in a home for a while.

The Cablers haven’t seen anything out of the norm, and the spires and spirals of the Settlement with its constant, soft light are beautiful as ever.  But the visit feels tense and none of the Burners are much calmer when they leave.  The constant, worried thread behind every conversation doesn’t help--it’s not that nobody is talking about Mike.  It’s that _everybody_ is _not_ talking about Mike.  There’s worry and sympathy in the face of everybody who recognizes them.  Nobody asks “have you found anything?” but it’s there when Tennie asks “...So how are you doing?”  cautious and sweet and careful not to push.  She holds Dutch’s hand under the table while the others talk about nothing with her dad, and Dutch squeezes her fingers and keeps his eyes on his plate.

Everybody is _not_ talking about Mike.

Nobody feels like going back to the hideout when they leave.  They drive aimlessly for a while in silence before Julie reaches out wordlessly and touches her map, sending coordinates.  Nobody answers.  Together, they turn away from the city center and start the slow spiral of pipes and tunnels toward the ceiling of Motorcity.

They end up in one of the massive abandoned drainage pipes that used to be the main waterline of Deluxe before some long-forgotten upgrade left them abandoned.  The pipes are big enough that all their cars can park side by side on its sloped bottom, and the view of Motorcity is spectacular.  None of them are in the mood to appreciate it much.  

“Good fight,” Texas offers, obviously daunted by the awkward silence.

“We ran away,” Dutch points out, eyes fixed on the view.

“...Blue is a new threat,” Julie says quietly, combing her hair forward over one shoulder to tangle her fingers in it.  “We have to do this carefully, guys.”

“...Blue?”  Chuck sounds a little bit shell-shocked.  “That’s what we’re calling him?”

The somber silence breaks as Dutch laughs and shakes his head.  “I didn’t have time to think of a better name, man, come on.  What were you gonna call him?”

“Makes sense,” says Texas firmly.  “Red’s red and Blue’s blue.”

“‘Blue’ it is.”  Julie wonders with a kind of distant anger what her father calls him.  Whether he’s ever planning to tell her about his new super-soldier.  Well, he never told her about Red, so who cares?  She doesn’t.  She shouldn’t.  She’s starting to, more and more now.

“Mike could’ve taken him,” says Chuck.

No one says much for a while after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustration 1: SpoonerizeSwiftness/Splickedylit  
> Illustration 2: HeatedHeadwear/Toastyhat  
> Character Sheet for blue: http://toastyhat.tumblr.com/post/144465294424/so-a-new-character-showed-up-in-the-motorcity


	3. Julie, Meet Blue!!  The Enemy is Closer than You Think!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While the Burners try to bring the gangs of Motorcity together and forestall a looming conflict, Julie finally learns one of her dad's secrets...and has to deal with a young Kane Co. cadet's attempted flirting.

“Okay, hear me out: what if it’s just Red...in a new suit?”

The hideout is comfortingly cool and neon--the Burners slump around the sitting room and nurse their various scrapes and bruises.  A general eye-roll goes around the circle--Chuck groans.  “Texas.   _Dude_ \--”

“It’s a totally legit question!” Texas protests, glaring at Chuck from where he’s sprawled with his legs spread over the table.  “Like, sure, maybe his fighting style was different--”

“Was it?” says Chuck weakly.

“ _Yes_ , little man, trust the Texas!  But maybe if he _trained_ to change it, like so he could go undercover--”

“Why would he do that, huh?” Dutch cuts in, his voice faintly muffled under his paint mask.  One hand describes a smooth, steady arc of purple paint across his new sheet metal canvas.

Texas snorts.  “Who knows, dude’s crazy!  Any more questions, or are we done here?  I think we’re done.”

“Of course you do,” mutters Dutch.

“Hey, what’d you say?”

“Nothin’!”

“Uh-huh, yeah, that’s what I thought.  Probably.  ‘Cause, y’know, it’s hard to tell from over here.”

“Yeah.  Listen, Tex, we can’t know for sure until we see Red again, but I’m pretty sure it’s someone new.”

“He does only target us,” Chuck says thoughtfully.  “That’s like Red.”  He’s perched with both feet up on the seat, a bundle of long limbs and knobbly joints, arms around his knees.  One of his screens, ever more present these days as his anxiety levels increase, floats near his interlocked hands.

“We don’t _know_ he only targets us,” says Julie, speaking up for the first time in a good ten minutes--she’s remained still and silent throughout Texas’s parade of outlandish theories.  

“Well, actually, I...kinda do,” says Chuck, nodding at his screen.  Julie leans over to look at the hologram, where a live feed of the Motorcity Alert System is slowly scrolling past.  It’s a disorganized kind of forum, a place for Motorcitizens to report danger or ask for places to spend the night now that their homes have been wrecked by Kanebots, or just to complain about the mutant rats in their toilets.

“Are you telling me _no one else_ has seen Blue?” Julie asks as a fresh post pops up-- _enforcr drone ovr robo-graveyarf.  stay a way…_

“No one on here,” says Chuck, flicking the screen with a finger.  Older posts blur past.  “I’ve been searching for keywords for like an hour, and if someone had seen him--”

“--They’d definitely have made a post,” Dutch finishes.  “Huh.  Yeah.”

“So he’s sneaky,” says Texas, craning his neck in a pained attempt to get a better look at Chuck’s screens.  “So, what if he’s here on a _secret mission_ , right? Huh?”

Julie frowns.  “Secret mission?  Like what?”

“Like, I dunno, smashing up that Duke guy’s stuff!”

“You don’t think it was the Skylarks?” asks Chuck.

“Well I _did_ , but then _you_ guys were all _oh we can trust Raygun it’s fine_ \--”

“For the _thousandth time_ ,” says Dutch, “his name is _Rayon_.  And he’s not gonna just take our word for it.  Pretty sure he likes us okay, but...not that much.”

“He likes Mike better than the rest of us anyway,” says Julie, and pinches the bridge of her nose like she’s got a headache coming on.  “We can’t go to those guys.  And if we can’t go to him we can’t go to any of them.”

“So we get proof he exists,” says Dutch, “and _then_ we take it to the gang leaders.”

“We also need proof he’s the one who’s been breaking their stuff,” Julie points out.  “If he even is.”

“There’s, like, no chance he isn’t!” Chuck interjects.  “Did you see those gloves?  Are those Kane Co. stuff?”

All eyes turn to Julie.  “Management intern,” she says sheepishly, uncomfortable.  “I’m still not allowed access to the R&D stuff, and I’ve definitely never heard of any new super-soldier.  Kane never made Red public, let alone this new guy, whoever he is.”

“Mm.”  Dutch stares at the painting he’s gotten done, sighs and drops his mask and his paints on the table.  “There’s trouble out there, guys.  We gotta do something, or they’re gonna be going for each other’s throats before we ever get ‘em any evidence.”

“We’ve got to start with the ones who’ll listen,” says Julie, and flops back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling.  “I can probably get Foxy to listen...we can work on it.  If we’re all fighting each other down here Kane can just send down strike teams wherever he wants and pick off gangs like rats in a--”

And then, as if somewhere in Deluxe he heard her saying his name, her dad’s line lights up on her comm.  Julie set it a long time ago so it wouldn’t immediately pop up calls from him--she still has nightmares where it doesn’t work for some reason and the comm screen pops up in front of all the Burners with a jovial _Julie-bear!_  That’s all it would take, it would be _that easy_ to bring her whole world crashing down.

“Oh, man,” she says, doing her best to keep her voice even and light.  “Text from Claire.  Looks like she’s, uh...really upset about something.”   

_Come to my office.  Ten minutes.  Don’t be late._

“What?”  Texas sounds more than a little bit hurt.  “You’re goin’?  But we gotta _plan_!”

“I know--seriously, sorry”  Julie pushes herself up, resisting the urge to groan, pulling up the most cheerful face she can.  “It looks like she’s really upset, what kind of friend would I be if I ditched?”

“Uh, the same kind you’re bein’ right now?”

“Texas, leave her alone,” says Dutch.  “We _can_ make plans without her, y’know.”

“Duh, Texas can do anything without _nobody_ ,” Texas says, affronted.  “--but she’s totally--”

“Say hi to Claire,” says Chuck.

“From all of us,” Dutch adds pointedly--Chuck sags back in his chair a little, looking disappointed and more than a little embarrassed.

“Can do!”  Julie is already jogging over to the drop-off over the garage, pulling Nine Lives’ keys out.  “It’s probably nothing.  I’ll see you guys later!”

\--

“Late again.”

It took a record-breaking fourteen minutes for her to cross miles of Motorcity and miles of Deluxe, change clothes, cloak her car and get from floor 0 to the top of Kane Co. tower.  Julie settles down in her chair and folds her hands in her lap, scrubbing as surreptitiously as possible at a smear of oil on one hand.  “Sorry, dad.  Claire’s pod was over in the M sector, it took me a while to get over here.”  

The lie slips out smoothly.  Kane regards her evenly for a few seconds, then sighs and shakes his head.  He’s smiling.  Julie relaxes a little.

“Friendship is important for a girl your age,” Kane says, and some small, bitter part of Julie’s mind whispers _then maybe you should give me space to make more than one friend, dad._  She smiles instead.  “--but these lessons are _more_ important.  I need you prepared.”

“I know.”  Talking about her timeliness brings attention to what she does outside of Kane Co. business--the last thing Julie wants to do is put her free time under her dad’s scrutiny.  Julie bites her lip and hurries on.  “We were talking about, um...utilization of resources.”

“Of course.”  Kane settles down in his chair, and in the white light Julie is suddenly struck by how grey the hair on his temples and around his mouth is.  “And you learned?”

“Keep your machine running smoothly,” Julie recites.  “If there’s conflict, make sure you’re there.  Control it.  Make it work for you.  A CEO doesn’t start fights, he--she--ends them.”

\--

It takes a solid hour and a half of wheedling--Julie and Claire talking to Foxy, Dutch increasingly frustrated with the Duke’s histrionics--before the Duke and the Amazons agree to meet up and talk. Neither of them is particularly excited to leave their turf, after the attack on the racetrack and the bombing at the Duke’s mansion, but eventually, with great reluctance, both gangs agree to the meet-up.

It was difficult to find a patch of neutral territory that couldn’t easily turn into a battlefield, but in the end it was Texas’s suggestion of the “Least awesome place in Motorcity” that led them to an old open square on the very outskirts of the city, practically boxed in by the rubble of collapsed buildings.  Normally, any decent Motorcity car could cross that much rough terrain no problem, but the twisted spikes of metal framework protruding from the concrete chunks could punch through even Stronghorn’s reinforced tires.  

It’s odd to see the leaders of two of the most powerful gangs in the city pick their way across the rubble on foot with their seconds in tow.  They’re not enjoying themselves, but they’re not firing limousine-shaped missiles or lasers at each other either.

“Duke.”

“We should do my place next time,” says the Duke, instead of acknowledging the--admittedly terse--greeting.  “Lot more _comfortable_.”  He gives the deserted square a disdainful look.

“I’d rather go live with the sewer rats for the rest of my life than go near your mansion,” says Foxy, deadpan.

“Karaoke then,” says the Duke, unfazed, and wiggles his eyebrows over the top of his sunglasses.  “You can even take the high notes.  I’m a generous man.”

“I heard you hit enough _high notes_ last time we saw each other,” says Foxy, and looks past him at Number Two, who is watching impassively with her hands on her hips.  “...I’m sure Babs has heard plenty of them too.”

The corner of Number Two’s immaculately-painted mouth quirks up.  In front of her, the Duke’s smile drops instantly off his face.  

“I’m sorry,” he says, in tones of affront.  “Coulda sworn you just said you were _tired_ of these _golden pipes._ ”

Foxy rolls her eyes.  “Not exactly.  Look, do you want to talk or not?”

“Sure, fine, hit me with it,” says the Duke.  “What’s your _beef_ , lady?”

“Oh, I think you _know_ ,” says Foxy softly.  “Why do you think I agreed to talk to you instead of those overall-wearing disasters?   _Someone_ had to be pulling their strings.”

The Duke raises one eyebrow and scratches his goatee.  “And you think it was _yours truly_?”

“I _know it,_ ” Foxy hisses.  “Don’t play dumb!  The Mama’s Boys are hiding out on your territory!”

“They certainly are _there_ ,” says the Duke, shrugging and leaning precariously to one side and then the other.  “That doesn’t mean I’ve been paying them to destroy your prrrroperty!   _Please_.”

“There’s no legit evidence that the Mama’s Boys did it in the first place,” Dutch interjects.  He and the other Burners have been watching the exchange with increasing concern.  

“And how would you know what kinda _evidence_ we’ve got?”  Foxy throws him an icy look.  “This isn’t your business.”

“If you’re startin’ a war, it’s everybody’s business.”

“Uh-huh.”  Foxy doesn’t look impressed.  “I got enough trouble talkin’ to this bozo without punching him in the face, I don’t need you sticking your nose in.”

“Oh, you can _try_ it!” interjects the Duke, and Dutch doesn’t even have time to glare at him before Foxy hisses “That is _it!_ ” and she’s lunging forward, cocking back a fist aimed directly for the Duke’s face.  Dutch dives forward, trying to intercept the blow--too late and too slow, and the Duke is just starting to flinch back but there’s no way he’s going to react in time--

Number Two seems to come out of nowhere, a blur of red fabric and fiery hair, and catches the punch one-handed.  For a second the two women are frozen, locked where they are, inches from each other’s faces.

“ _Walk away,_ ” says Number Two, very quiet.  “ _Y’know you never could beat me, honey._ ”

“ _It’s not_ you _I want to beat, Babs_ ,” says Foxy, and pushes--Number Two’s lip twists as she sets her feet and holds her ground.  “Get outta my way.  I just wanna kick his ass a little.”

The Duke snorts derisively.  “You can’t handle the Duke’s dukes, lady.  You wanna fight?  You’re on!”

“Three days, after the meeting,” says Foxy--Number Two glances back at her boss, frowning, but the Duke isn’t looking at her.  “One on one, no weapons.  Eight, at the Fist.”

“ _Boss,_ ” says Number Two, and there’s a hint of tense warning in her voice.  The Duke waves her off.  

“You’re on,” he repeats.  

“ _See you there_ ,” Foxy says, low and dangerous, and they both turn on their heels and stalk back towards their gangs, leaving the Burners standing alone in the middle of the no-man’s-land watching them go.

\--

“Very good,” says Kane.  “If you’re going to be in control, you have to make it clear that you’re in charge.  There’s a balance.  Petty fights between recruits aren’t the business of a company head.  Delegation should take care of those.”

“There are rivalries all over the R&D department, though, aren’t there?”

Kane blinks and then raises an eyebrow at her, apparently amused.  “What makes you say that?”

“Just…” Julie clears her throat.  “...I picked it up somewhere.”

“Well.”  Kane smiles.  “There’s a difference between a fight that has to be controlled and a rivalry, Julie-bear.  One of them grinds the gears, the other one greases them.”

The image of Texas and Mike sparring flashes back into Julie’s mind, sudden and painful.  “Conflict that drives people to...work better and outdo each other?”  She tries, and knows she’s hit the nail on the head by the way her father’s smile widens.

“Nothing like a bit of adversity to bring your employees to heel, Julie.”

\--

The day after the disastrous negotiations between Foxy and the Duke, it’s Julie’s turn to try keeping the peace.  The Burners arrive at the meetup location earlier than agreed, but the Skylarks and the Amazons apparently both had the same idea because they’re already there when Stronghorn, Nine Lives and Whiptail pull up to the wide, wrecked boulevard halfway between the gangs’ respective territories.

As they get out of their cars Foxy waves off her gang, pulls off her helmet and shakes out her ponytail, then tucks the helmet casually under her arm and stalks out into the no-man’s-land between their cars.  Rayon pushes himself up away from the hood of his sleek black Buick and strides out to meet her.

“It’s been a while,” he says, and looks impassively over the top of his sunglasses at her.  “Foxy.”

“Rayon.”  Foxy cocks out a hip, apparently unimpressed, looks him up and down just as critically as he scans her, then raises her eyebrows.  “...Last time I saw you one-on-one you weren’t as...smartly dressed.”

Rayon steps forward, not breaking eye contact.  Julie backs away, staring from one to the other as they take up each other’s space.  “ _Found a better tailor since then._ ”

Foxy smirks.  “...I liked you better without the suit.”

“The Skylarks had to change their look sometime.”  Rayon smooths his hands down his immaculately-tailored jacket.  “...I liked the outfit your Amazons had when you were starting up too.  Don’t hear me complainin’.”

“Oh, I _know_ you liked the--”

“Are we gonna talk business here or not?”  For just a second, Rayon’s eyes dart to the Burners and then back to Foxy.  Then he straightens his back and his eyes are hidden again.  “We can reminisce later, Foxy.  When there aren’t _children_ around.”

Foxy shoots the Burners a look as well, then rolls her eyes and sighs.  As if it was coordinated, she and Rayon both step back.  “How old are you?”  Foxy shoots at Julie abruptly.  

“...Eighteen in a couple days,” Julie says.  And then, pointedly, “..I’m an adult.”

Foxy looks back at Rayon.  Rayon frowns at her.

“...Just wondering,” says Foxy, and crosses her arms.  “Alright, Rayon.  Let’s talk.”

“Thank you.”  Rayon says, and pushes his sunglasses up his nose, hiding his eyes behind mirrored lenses.  “Heard you have some trouble going down in your territory and the Duke won’t back down.  And hey, you wanna trash the guys responsible, I get that.  Doesn’t mean I can just let you carve up my land with those hot rods to get to ‘em.  You know we can’t look the other way when somebody crosses our borders.”

“I’ve got no problems with you,” Foxy says, and the words have no reason to sound flirtatious but maybe that’s just how she talks.  Julie fidgets and keeps a sharp eye on the hand closest to Rayon’s gun.

“I know you don’t.  Just stay off my land.”

Foxy’s mouth tightens.  “I’m telling you, _Ray_ , I’m not the one you need to watch out for.  Are we really gonna fight over this?  Because last time I checked, _I_ wasn’t your enemy.”

Rayon stares at her, statue-still; even with his eyes fully obscured by his shades, there’s a kind of watchful tension between him and Foxy as they size each other up.

“Yeah.  You’re not my enemy,” says Rayon finally.  Julie sighs in relief and steps back, glancing back at the others--Dutch flashes her a covert thumbs-up, Chuck grins shakily.  

“...The Duke is the one we _both_ need to watch.”

Julie whips back around--Foxy is smiling, but it doesn’t look like a friendly expression.  

“We don’t agree on much these days, but he’s done enough double-crossing on both of us,” Rayon points out, and raises one eyebrow.  “Don’t think you like him much either right now.  And…” he spreads his hands, “...the enemy of my enemy…”

“You don’t have to be _enemies_ ,” Julie starts, but Foxy has already held out a hand.  

“Then if he makes a move, we can expect your support?”

“Whatever support the Skylarks can spare,” Rayon agrees, and takes her outstretched hand to shake.  A murmur rises from the gangs on either side--they may not know what was said, but everybody here saw that handshake.  Down in Motorcity, between people like Rayon and Foxy, that means more than any written contract.

“It’s a deal.”  Foxy reaches out in a whiplash movement, almost too fast to follow, and jerks Rayon forward by his tie, inches from his face.  Her voice is a low hiss.  “... _But if you double-cross me, Rayon--_ ”

Rayon reaches up calmly and grips her wrist with a dark, angular hand.  

“ _I could say the same to you,_ ” he murmurs back, and pulls her hand away from his suit, straightening his tie fastidiously.  “...Pleasure doing business with you.  Call me.”

“Mm.”  Foxy turns her back on him, stalking back towards her car.  “No.  If you want to catch up on old times, _you_ can call _me_.”

The Burners stand and watch in horrified silence as the two gangs march back to their cars, murmuring amongst themselves and glancing over their shoulders at the line of cars across from them.  Then there’s a sharp blast of hot wind, bitter with the smell of selenium sulfide and exhaust, and the Skylarks and Amazons are racing away toward their respective territories, the roar of their engines fading into the distance.

“Well that went _great_ ,” says Chuck, more exhausted than sarcastic, and slumps down on the hood of Nine Lives.  “Now what?”

“We can’t let Foxy and the Duke fight,” says Julie.  “...I mean...we can’t, can we?”

“Iiii dunno.”  Texas shifts uncomfortably.  “Y’know, they got a lotta rules and stuff, it’s pretty hardcore.  When they throw down down here they throw down pretty good.”

“So you don’t think we can stop it?”  Dutch doesn’t sound hopeful, and when Texas shakes his head Dutch just sighs and reaches up to rub the back of his neck, wincing at the tension in his shoulders.  “...Okay.  So what kind of options have we got?”

"Find a shelter and wait for it to blow over?”  Chuck suggests humorlessly, and idly pulls up the city feed again, scrolling through it absently like he’s barely aware he’s doing it.  “Nobody’s seen Blue.”

“Big surprise.”  

For a second they all sit in silence, contemplating their own thoughts.  This is one of Motorcity’s few empty, quiet places--high, dry, and close enough to people that there aren’t any giant mutant rats (or not too many, anyway), but close enough to a Kanebot entry point that no one wants to risk setting up a living space here again.  The space is wide open, but still there’s a kind of pressure in the air, the sound of four people not saying anything at all.

“I should go back up,” says Julie finally, breaking the silence with an effort.  The thought of getting up and driving, walking all the way back to her building and getting up to her pod is really daunting, but she’s been split so thin for the past couple of days between her dad’s meetings and Burner problems, she’s barely had time to sit down in her room and relax.  If she’s even still capable of relaxing--it kind of feels like she’s forgotten how.  “It’s gotta look like I’ve got some kind of life aboveground, y’know.  People just think I’m spending a lot of time with Claire, but they’re gonna start asking questions.”

“Go keep your cover,” Dutch says, and Julie tries to convince herself she doesn’t hear a note of bitterness in his voice.  For just a second she hears Texas’s voice in her head, _Miss Deluxe_.  

“I’ll come back tomorrow.”

Once she gets up to Deluxe, though, there’s nothing to do.  Claire’s line is busy when she tries to call, her dad is nowhere to be found now that he doesn’t want her for another lecture, and her room seems blank and sterile and boring after the neon and clutter of Motorcity.  God, what did she do before she became a Burner?  Sit and stare at walls?

Well, just because she’s up in Deluxe doesn’t mean she can’t keep helping out her friends, even if they do probably think she’s up here sunbathing and getting her nails done or something.  Julie cracks her knuckles, crawls up onto her bed and picks up her tablet to get to work.  A few minutes later, having run into a tough firewall, she pulls her tiger plush over and starts explaining the issue to it in a quiet voice.  Halfway through, the answer hits her, like it always does when she starts throwing her problems at someone else.

She’s still battering away at fake prison signals, trying to pry some kind of worthwhile information out of them, when a message notification pops up, marked with the corporate logo and a TOP PRIORITY flag.  She stares at it, thinking fast--she didn’t miss a meeting, did she?  No, she didn’t, she definitely didn’t.  There’s a lot going on right now, but those meetings weigh on her mind like lead, she wouldn’t have forgotten.

So why is her dad sending her top-priority messages?

Whatever it is, it’s nice to be up in Deluxe when he wants her, for once.  Julie has time to pull on a new jacket, run a brush through her hair, double-check to make sure there’s no incriminating smudges of oil or grease on her pristine Kane Co. jumpsuit.  Even if she wasn’t expecting a lesson today, it’ll be nice to finally walk into her dad’s meeting room without feeling rushed and harried and out of breath.

Even without the drive up from Motorcity it’s a long hike up to the offices on the very top floor of Kane Co. tower.  Julie straightens her clothes, fixes her hair, practices her smile as she rides the elevator up, provides authorization, goes higher and higher.  Outside the glass pod windows, Deluxe gets fainter and farther down, spreads out below her like a glittering map.  Every so often, in the starfield of docked pods, a red light gleams faintly--the Kane Co. enforcer bots, patrolling for anybody who dares to go out for a walk in the fading twilight.  The poisonous evidence of the rigid control behind the mask of perfection.

By the time she reaches the top, she’s composed her face into an expression of confused interest, a little bit of concern, a dash of annoyance.  She was in bed, after all, for all her dad knew she was already settling in for the night.  Honestly, dad, how do you expect your baby girl to grow up strong if you wake her up and drag her to the top of the tower at all times of the afternoon?

Her fingers tap out the entrance code automatically, easy as turning a doorknob, and the white panels slide open.  Beyond, the familiar vast space of her father’s office, and the man himself.  Not a hologram, she notes, with faint relief.  It’s something that’s been sitting in the back of her mind since Vega-- _Ask yourself, if he can’t be here in person then_ where is he?   _What is he doing?  Ask yourself.  Face up to it._

“You wanted to see me, Dad?”  Just the right mix of nervous curiosity and teenager-ish resentment.

Kane is standing by the window, looking out at his city.  He doesn’t turn around, and for a long minute he doesn’t answer either.  Julie knows her dad better than to assume he didn’t hear her--she rolls her eyes and waits patiently for him to finish with his dramatic pause.

“You remember a few weeks ago when you asked how my day was and I told you it was boring,” Kane says, and finally turns back to give Julie that look that makes her feel six years old again, like she’s been seen right through.  “You and I both know you that wasn’t true.  Because you’re my girl, Julie.  You know when the air is changing.”

Julie doesn’t bother to deny it.  “I don’t like being lied to,” she says instead, and her dad shakes his head.  “And I don’t like being kept out of the loop.  I told you that.”

“Yes, you did.”

“And?”

“And you were right,” says Kane, stern but fond.  “If you inherit my company, you’re going to inherit my war too.  You deserve to know more.”

“But not _everything_?” asks Julie shrewdly, folding her arms the way he does when he’s unimpressed with what someone’s giving him.

Kane chuckles.  “It’s still coming together, Julie-bear.  Maybe later.”  He stands.  “Follow me.  I have someone I want you to meet.”

Julie is expecting to be taken down to the cadet barracks, or maybe all the way to the R&D department, but they’ve only come down a few floors before her dad leads her off down another long, white hallway full of offices and meeting rooms.  The air here isn’t just silent, it’s hard and still with the force of the silence.  There are a lot of people here, all being very, very quiet.  Occasionally they pass a room full of people in white uniforms, talking to each other only in murmurs.

Julie has been to these levels before, right below her father’s office, but she’s never gotten used to it.  She catches herself trying to huddle a little closer to his shoulder as they walk; she straightens her back and keeps her eyes facing straight ahead, and thinks maybe she catches the slightest hint of a smile on her dad’s mouth as they walk.

And then there’s...this room.  Julie’s never been in here before, though for a couple of weeks last year she devoted all her time to get through that blank white door.  It looks exactly like every other door on this level, except that it’s never open and to Julie’s knowledge no one is authorized to open it.

Except, obviously…

Kane presses a palm to the scanner and the door whooshes open.  Julie looks up and immediately sees a figure in black and blood-red, a splash of vivid darkness on Deluxe’s soft white and blue.  

There’s no conscious thought involved.  Julie sees Red’s paint-splattered chest and feels herself move before the sight even registers, lashing out a fist with a noise that’s less of a fearful shriek and more of a snarl.  Red moves just as fast, jerking back away from her punch and then lashing out a hand to catch her fist.  For a second, Julie is intensely aware of the feeling of warm leather against her knuckles--some part of her almost expected him to be as cold and hard as one of her father’s robots.  But she can hear him breathing behind his mask.

“Let her go,” Kane snaps, and Julie remembers abruptly where she is and what’s going on.  She’s started editing her expression and her posture before she thinks about it, putting on a high gasp as Red keeps his grip on her hand, riding out her attempts to pull free.  “ _Now_!”

“... _Who’s this?”_ Red asks, and finally lets go.  Julie backs away quickly, feeling the ache in the hand he’d been holding.  The feeling of a human hand under his gloves.  That thought is abruptly, intensely unsettling--she schools her face blank and thinks about Mike instead.  Mike chained up in a cell with that black and red mask watching him as the Genesis Pod came down, Mike with a black eye and swollen, battered face, Mike pretending he wasn’t in any pain until Jacob sat him down and took a good look and immediately found more bruises over top of cracked ribs.  Her dad is one thing, but Red is an enemy.  Will _always_ be an enemy.  Not for the first time, Julie wishes her Kane Co persona didn’t have to be so... _delicate._ If she could pull out her boomerang _right now--_

“None of your business,” says Kane, sharp and heavy, and Julie startles as one of her dad’s heavy hands lands on her shoulder, pulling her closer to his side.  “--all you need to know is if you touch her again, I’ll... _terminate your employment..._ myself.”

Red looks slowly back and forth between the two of them, and Julie stares back at him, startled by her dad’s sudden vehemence--Kane has always been, if not distant, then at least professional.  Nobody gets to see this side of him, the protective father.  ( _Nobody except Mike, in the sunset with your feet dangling over endless space--_ )  

It takes a heroic force of will to keep Julie rooted where she is, blank-faced and frozen in place.  Her father steps away from her, as if he just realized how clearly he’s broadcasting his investment in her, and folds his arms over his chest instead, drawing himself up to his full height.

Incredibly, Red seems unaffected by the Grade-A Kane Menace leveled at him as he looks slowly between Kane and Julie, who feels a fluttering, inexplicable unease in her stomach the longer his silence continues.

 _“So, what,”_ says Red finally, in the tone of someone who just finished adding two and two together but doesn’t quite believe the answer is four.   _“She’s your...daughter?”_

“No,” Kane grinds out, but Julie feels her whole body stiffen and knows, on some level, that Red noticed.

 _“She_ is, _”_ says Red, derisive and disbelieving.  “ _Why else would you be letting little girls in on your plans now?  This is a mistake,_ Kane.   _You don’t know she can keep a_ secret _.”_

Kane draws himself up to his full height and jabs a square, calloused finger at Red, who doesn’t budge an inch.  “Do _not_ test me!  You wear my symbol, you follow my rules!”

There’s a tense moment, which isn’t improved by the quick, pointed look Kane gives Julie while Red fails to answer-- _You see?  This is how you handle subordinates._ So Red...isn’t the person she’s supposed to meet?  His introduction seems to have been nothing but a side-note.

_“Whatever you say.”_

Kane raises an eyebrow in Julie’s direction, point proven, and then opens a door in the far wall with a tap of his holo-screen.  Someone--another Kane Co. employee, by the colors--steps through it and begins the long approach across the office space.  Julie glances back at Red as they wait, uneasyat the thought of letting him out of her line of sight, but he just stands there, hands hanging at his sides, refusing to stand at attention but not making any move to attack.  Does he know where Mike is?  If he’s been hurting him again, Julie’s going to do worse than punch him this time.  She could be looking for Mike right now, for where they’ve buried him under layers of security and secrecy.

“You know, uh, Mister Kane,” she says, edging a step closer to her father, “Maybe, uh, this guy...is right.  Is there really anything for me to do here?”

“You’re here to _observe_ ,” says Kane sternly, and then adds with an eye on Red, “and _not_ to undermine my authority.”

“I know I _said_ I wanted to know more,” Julie starts, and then the movement of the newcomer drawing closer catches her eye and her half-glance in their direction turns into an unabashed, terrified stare.

From a distance, she’d only noticed that they were wearing Kane Co. colors.  

She hadn’t seen the mask.

Fortunately, Julie has enough masks of her own on hand, and she quickly readjusts her features to something more like innocent curiosity, with a dash of damsel-in-distress fear as Blue limps up to them and stands neatly to attention.  Something more like _Oh no, another scary guy in a mask_ than _Oh no, the guy who almost killed me and all of my friends._

She really wants to get out of here.

“You,” Kane snaps, and Red turns his head slowly, flagrantly refusing to stand to attention or show any sign of urgency.  “Stand guard outside the door.”

“ _I think my skills are better served in here,_ ” says Red--a little resentfully, Julie thinks.  Beside her, her father gathers himself up like a stormcloud, teeth grinding.  

“That’s for _me_ to decide _.  Outside._ Now!”

Red’s invisible eyes hold Kane’s glare for a long second, and then he turns sharply on his heel and strides to the door.  Kane watches him go, frowning, and doesn’t turn back until the door closes.

“...Good,” he says.  “Always keep an eye on your tools, Julie.  Know which ones you can trust…” he throws a last, fleeting glare back at the door Red vanished out of.  “...and which ones you _can’t._ ”

Blue shifts a little.  Julie stares at his feet instead of the mirror-bright nothingness where his face should be.  

“Now!”  Kane claps his hands, so sudden and loud Julie jumps and has to swallow a startled squeak.  “Introductions.  Commander, this is Julie.” Kane beckons Julie forward--she steps up reluctantly, hands itching for her boomerang.  “Julie, this is the newest addition to the Kane Co. ultra-elite security force.”

Julie swallows the _“I know”_ pushing at the back of her throat and takes a moment to look at Blue up close and personal for the first time.

“This is my daughter,” says Kane.  “And you are going to protect her with your life.  Her safety is your highest priority.  Do you understand, Commander?  You won’t talk about her to a single living soul.  You’ll keep her secrets no matter what it costs you.  You will _protect.  My.  Daughter._ ”

For a long second, Blue is silent.  Then he nods slowly--not like Red moved slowly, all passive rebellion and aggravation, but slowly like his mind is somewhere else.  Like he’s deep in thought.

“... _Yes Sir,_ ” he says.  “ _I’ll protect Julie._ ”

“That’s _Miss_ Julie, to you,” says Julie, nettled for no reason she can really understand.  Her father glances back at her and chuckles to himself.  

“You’ll follow her orders as if they were mine, unless they directly contradict my word.”  Another half-glance at Julie, with that almost teasing gleam in his eyes  that makes something confused and soft and painful bloom up in her chest for a second.   _Daddy’s little girl, always testing the rules,_ he’d said to her once, when she was very small, and he’d looked at her just like that.  “Starting tomorrow you’re her bodyguard, until you get further orders.”

“ _Yes Sir._ ”

“Dad,” says Julie hurriedly, “--I don’t need a--”

“You’re going to be my successor, Julie,” Kane says firmly.  “Until you can defend yourself, you are not to leave your bodyguard’s sight in public unless he’s called away on an independent mission.  I don’t want to hear any arguments.”

There’s a time to fight, and there’s a time to back down.  Julie bites the inside of her cheek until she tastes blood, and nods.

“...Yes,” she says, and feels Blue’s invisible eyes on her.  “ _Sir._ ”

Kane sighs.  “...Julie...”

“I’m going to my room.” Julie turns sharply and marches away.  Her spine prickles at the sound of soft, slightly uneven footfalls behind her; Blue is at her shoulder, silent, limping on the leg Julie hit.  Julie wishes she’d broken it.  “Goodnight.”

The door slides shut behind her.  

Julie ignores Blue all the way through the angry speedwalk to the elevator, but when she walks in and he steps in next to her she can’t hold in the bubbling anger in her gut any more.

“Back off!”  she snaps, and shoves him sharply away from her.  “Stop standing so close to me!”

Blue staggers just a little at the impact, and then straightens up and nods.

_“...Yes, Miss Julie.”_

He takes a careful step away from her, locks his hands behind his back and settles back into quiet stillness again.  

“Further than that!”

Blue takes another step, and goes still again.  It’s like talking to a robot, and Julie doesn’t _want_ him there, making her life harder, putting her and her friends in danger.  All she wants to do is go punch the walls and scream into her pillow.

“ _...Well that was fun_ ,” says Blue quietly.

Julie jumps.  Blue is still standing perfectly at attention when she turns to look at him, but his helmet quirks in her direction a little, like he’s glancing at her.  

“...What?”

“ _Mister Kane doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”_ Blue makes a noise that might be half a laugh.  “ _That was a pretty good push though--you’re stronger than you look.  I don’t think you need me here at all._ ”

Julie stares.  Blue stares back.  The sudden change--from that monosyllabic,  almost robotic obedience to casual friendliness--is jarring.  For a second, she almost smiles.

Then the image flashes back into her mind of a blur of white and blue, her friends staggering and winded and in pain, and the moment is gone.

“Watch it,” she says, and the words come out heavy and bitter.  “You’re my bodyguard, _not_ my friend.  Just...do your job.”

Blue just nods, and the lights gleam slick and bright on his blank mask as he faces forward again.

“ _Yes, Miss Julie._ ”

A message pops up on Julie’s terminal when she’s about to climb into bed--she knows without looking who it’s from.

 _Happy 18th birthday Julie-bear,_ says the preview, and Julie slams a finger against the _off_ button and climbs into bed with the taste of acid stress in the back of her throat.  

When Julie goes to sleep that night, Blue is standing outside her door.

\--

When she wakes up, he’s gone.  

In some ways, Julie’s relieved, but she also can’t help wondering--if he’s not here, where is he?  Either down in Motorcity, doing more to terrorize its inhabitants and hurt her friends, or…

Doing whatever it is he does with free time, if he has any.  Seems unlikely, she thinks, stepping into the shower.  Hot water, but not too hot.  Just another one of those little things that’s always perfect in Deluxe.  

Blue is masked like Red but he certainly doesn’t _act_ like Red...nothing about him screams “born in Motorcity”...not least the fact that he doesn’t have a car like Red’s.  Julie rinses scentless blue shampoo through her hair and switches on the air-dry function, mentally comparing what she knows of Red and Blue.

Maybe the suit and mask are just part of the Perfect Supersoldier look?  Blue doesn’t shoot lightning from his hands, but obviously the same people who’ve been improving Red’s lightning-gauntlets have been working on Blue’s gloves.  Julie can still call to mind the way the earth under her feet shivered when he sent out that shockwave.  

Time to get dressed in the same thing she wears every day.  Looking down at her standard Kane Co. bodysuit, Julie longs more than anything to be back in Motorcity, sharing information and getting up to speed on the situation there.  The fight between Foxy and the Duke is supposed to be tomorrow night, as well as the “meeting” everybody keeps talking about, whatever that is.  But until she figures out how often Blue’s going to be around her, she _has_ to play it safe.  Stay in Deluxe.  Send a message when you know for a fact you’re safe.

As she finishes pulling on her second boot her stomach rumbles, but just thinking about breakfast with her father makes Julie feel like kicking something.

Time to brave the Kane Co. Tower cafeteria.

The room is huge, but during breakfast it’s still packed to the walls with young men and women in Kane Co. white and blue.  It’s crowded and loud, but it’s also kind of nice.  Nobody knows who she is, in here.  If she keeps her head down, she vanishes into the crowd.  

She gets her tray of throat cubes from an apathetic cafeteria drone and picks her way across the room to a table that’s obviously had almost all of its seats pirated for other, more populated circles.  The seats are old and wobbly, probably from hundreds of overzealous cadets throwing themselves into them over the years; she picks the least-battered one, but it still jerks up and down on its faulty repulsors as she slides her tray onto the table and slumps over it.

She’s sitting there, picking dourly at her unappetizing plate of throat cubes, for quite a while.  People come and go, chattering loudly, discussing pod malfunctions or gossip or family.  Groups of cadets come in in packs from training, rowdy and wound up from drills and sparring.  R&D scientists tend to stick in small groups of one or two, or eat alone spaced apart from each other and not talking much.  The management interns who are technically her peers pass by her table without a second glance, complaining about paperwork and flight-plan errors.  

“Hey.”

Julie jumps. She hadn’t realized she was sitting and staring out at the cafeteria blankly; her brain is so tired after all the worry and stress of the past couple of days, she got caught up people-watching, picking out departments.  When she looks up, she sees a tall boy with broad shoulders and a severe crew cut, grinning down at her.  He looks kind of battered, there are fading bruises on the bridge of his nose--maybe he’s R&D?  There’s usually at least one R&D guy wandering around with a chipped tooth or a split lip.

“Um…” she sits up a little straighter and forces a smile.  “...hey?”

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you come down here before.”  He sits down, pushing his seat in a little too close--Julie scoots away and he glances down and then laughs a little self-consciously and slides over as well, opening up the space between them.  “--sorry.”

“I don’t eat here often.”  Julie picks at her food.  It jiggles.  

“Yeah, I’ve seen who you hang out with.  You’re more of a ‘private lunch room’ kind of girl,” says the boy, and reaches out with a deft flick of his hand to steal a cube off her plate.  “--I’m Harley.  Oh wait, I mean...” he salutes, sharp and showy and puts on a bossy, barking voice.  “Commander Alex Harley, Ma’am!”

Julie smiles, just a little bit less lukewarm.  His eyes looked sleepy when she saw him at first, but they’re very sharp and very bright, and the way he watches her is...weird.  But his smile is nice.  “Julie,” she says, and offers a hand to shake.  

“I know.”  Harley takes her hand and gives it a firm shake, then pushes himself up from his seat again.  “I’ve seen you around!  Nice to officially meet you, uh, face to face.  I’ve wanted to say hi for a while, I guess...today was just the day!”  He winces as he straightens up, resting a hand on his leg.  “ _Mm._ ”

It’s instinct by now--Julie starts to reach out to steady him. Harley waves her concern off with a laugh and straightens up, bending his knees a little and wincing.  “--just messed up my leg the other week,” he says.  “Can’t talk about it.  Top secret.”  He winks and turns away, and Julie stares after him with her hand still hanging in the air, frozen.  “I’ll see you around.”

A couple minutes later, Julie is in her room, fingertips rattling impatiently on her desk while one of her screens makes muffled chiming noises.  “Come on come on come on…” she murmurs, staring at the blank screen.  “Rrgh, pick _up_ \--!”

_“Julie, hey!”_

“Claire!” Julie exclaims gratefully, sitting forward.  “Hey, I met this guy today in the cafeteria--”

Claire gasps and too late, Julie realizes she should have been clearer about why she’s calling.   _“Juliiiieeee!  OMG, was he cute?  Do you think he liked you?”_

“He definitely did,” says Julie, unable to help herself, but as Claire squeals and waves her hands around her face, she hurries to amend, “But--that’s not why I’m calling, really--”

And she pauses.  Claire would keep any secret, she knows that all too well.  But when do the secrets get too dangerous?  Wouldn’t Claire be better off not knowing this particular bit of top-secret Kane Co. information?

Julie makes a split-second decision and says, “...He said he was working on some top-secret project.  That’s why I’m calling.  I have access to basic info about all the cadets but I wanted to know if you could tell me anything about him.  Alex Harley?  Is he one of your Friends on KaneBook?”

With anyone else, this question would be a long shot, but Claire has been steadily adding people ever since Deluxe’s highly-monitored social network was introduced and Julie is convinced she must have half the city in her Friend list.

Claire looks slightly disappointed, but says, _“Sure!  Just gimme a sec…”_ Sounds of busy typing, then… _“Oh!  Yeah, he’s on here!  But he doesn’t post much, just science articles and stuff about training.  Bo-ring!”_

“That’s it?” asks Julie, her heart sinking.  “Nothing about work, or--”

Claire sits forward suddenly, eyes widening.   _“Ooh!”_

“What?  What?”

A high-pitched giggle.   _“Oh, nothing, he just posts a lot of pictures of himself...you’re right, he_ is _cute!”_

“I didn’t say that,” Julie mumbles, sitting back, but Claire isn’t listening.  

_“Oooo, Julie look at this one!”_

“Claire…”  but it’s too late, the picture is loading on her screen.  As the picture loads downward, Julie’s eyebrows rise higher and higher.  “...uh...okay.”  And then, because Claire is obviously waiting for more than that, “...wow.”

Harley smiles a little self-consciously out of the picture, face half-hidden by a Kane Co. tablet and shirt pulled up to show off a body that’s much more lean and muscular than it looked in the company uniform.  Julie meets his pixelated blue eyes for a second and then rolls her own eyes and moves the picture out of the way of her call.  “Yeah, that’s, uh...that’s swell, Claire.”

“ _I’m just saying, if you have to pick a boy, and I mean--boys are gross.  But if you have to pick one, he’s pretty cute!”_

“Sure, Claire,” says Julie, and rubs one temple as the ever-present headache starts to ease back into her temples.  “Listen, I’ve gotta go, okay?  I’ll try and figure something else out…”

_“No no no, Juliiieee, wait!  I know what you should do!”_

“What?”

_“Ask him out!”_

“Uh…”

 _“No, I mean, he told you he was doing top-secret stuff to impress you, right?  He_ so _wants to go out!  And if you do it right maybe he’ll tell you more--I can help you!  Oh.  My god.  Julie.  This is gonna be so fun!”_

“It is?” says Julie, flummoxed.  “I mean...you really want to help?”

_“Of course!”_

_ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Harley. Alex Harley has done some things wrong. Next chapter: Explosions!! Arguing!! A date!!


	4. Julie and Claire, Ultimate Spy Team!! A Date Interrupted!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julie goes on a spy-date! Claire is excited! Julie’s father...is not. Meanwhile, the situation in Motorcity is only escalating...

[](http://toastyhat.tumblr.com/private/image/148414739509/tumblr_obcqq8oea51rpgisp) 

The plan goes into motion the next day, partially because Julie has no time to waste and partially because she’s afraid if she waits any longer, Claire is going to explode from excitement.  She insists on coming over early “to help you pick out an outfit!!!” and flips through endless almost-identical copies of Kane-Co.-approved clothing before picking out one that looks basically the same as Julie’s usual clothes and deciding firmly that it’s perfect.  

It’s only the heavy security on the tower itself that keeps her from following Julie into the cafeteria to watch, but Julie still gets to listen to her best friend’s excited whispering as she walks through the identical white corridors of the tower towards the sound of hundreds of chattering employees.  Julie reaches up under pretense of flicking her hair off her shoulder, and turns the sound of Claire’s voice down a little, carefully repositioning the earpiece.

“ _Say hi to somebody so I can see if it works!_ ”

“If you can hear people when I walk past them you’re fine,” says Julie, barely moving her lips, and smiles as a group of cadets goes by, talking noisily and shoving each other.  “...could you hear those guys?”

“ _Yeah!”_

Claire’s voice tends to squeak even in person, and even through the earpiece it’s pretty deafening.  Julie winces and turns the volume down a little more.  

“I’m going in.”

“ _Ohmigod this is so exciting!_ ”

“ _So_ exciting,” Julie groans, but Claire just giggles and it makes her feel a little better somehow.  Alright.  Showtime.

It doesn’t take long after she’s gotten her food--within a couple of minutes Julie sees a tall, dark-haired figure limp through the door and stop, looking around.  Watching him out of the corner of one eye, she wonders for a moment what he’s looking for--then he spots her sitting alone at her table and starts purposefully toward her.  Okay, well.  That’s promising.

“... _He’s on his way,_ ” she says softly, and Claire squeaks excitedly in her ear.

“ _I’m ready!_ ”

“Should I wave to him or something?”

_“Uuuuhhhh, no!  Wait until he gets to you, then look all surprised, like, happy-surprised.  You can do that, right?”_

“Probably?” Julie manages.

 _“It’s_ easy _, look, you’re cute and he likes you!  You’re lucky, this is going to be a snap.”_

“Right.  Okay.”

Julie sweeps her hair over her shoulder, hiding her face while still allowing her a fuzzy view of Harley as he approaches.  She pretends to pick at her throat cubes, heart hammering.  Alright, you can do this.

 _“It’ll be fine!”_ says Claire the mind-reader.  Julie smiles even though Harley is now within a few steps of her, and forces herself to wait patiently for him to make the first move.  Not too eager, Claire said.

“Hey, Julie.”

“Oh!”  Quick glance.  Smiling double-take.  Self-consciously tuck hair back over one ear.  “Alex, hi!”

“Hey,” he says again, and then, seeming to realize he should say something else, “Mind if I sit here?”

“You don’t even have any food,” Julie points out.  “And...I’m almost done eating.”

Harley glances down at her hardly-depleted stacks of cubes and raises his eyebrows.

“I’m--not too hungry these days,” Julie says quickly, and then, seizing on a convenient truth, “it’s, uh--stress.  You know, from work.”

“Oh, yeah,” says Harley, smiling again as he sits down.  “I _know_.”

Julie narrows her eyes slightly at the weirdly pointed emphasis, but before she can inquire further Claire’s voice pipes up in her ear, making her jump a little.   _“Okay, play it up!  You’re both stressed or whatever, so you both need a break, and by break you mean date.  Go on!”_

“Don’t tell anybody I said this?”  Julie leans in conspiratorially--Harley leans in too, all wide neon eyes.  “This is a great job and everything?  But I don’t think Mr. Kane has ever even _heard_ the words ‘day off’.”

Harley laughs. “Not even for you guys upstairs?”

“ _Especially_ for us upstairs.”  Julie bites her lip, measures three long seconds of silence, and then glances up and meets his eyes.  “...Even when I find somebody to hang out with from outside of work, they don’t get it, y’know?”

“Oh, yeah,” says Harley again, and he’s obviously trying to play it cool but the tips of his ears are going just barely pink.  “Ha...I know what you mean.”

 _“Like you haven’t got a totally great friend outside work!_ ”  Claire giggles before she can finish the sentence, breaking her mock-severe tone.  “ _I know you gotta do what you gotta do though!  He’s totally going for it!_   _Make a move, Julie!_ ”

Okay.  Okay.  

“Maybe we should keep each other company,” Julie says, and then, keenly aware of how her own cheeks are going pink now as well, hurries on “--I get a couple of hours to myself before curfew most nights, we should...catch dinner some time.” She fiddles shyly with her hair like a good Kane Co. girl.  “...if you can get some time off from your _secret project._ ”  She must get just the right amount of breathless giggly charm on the last two words, because Harley sits up straighter, chest swelling.

“Maybe tonight?” he says, and Julie makes an effort not to wince as Claire shrills in her earpiece.

_“Eeeee, we’re so good at this!  Okay, Julie, don’t say yes right away, okay?  He still needs to want to impress you!”_

Julie wants to object, but there’s no way she can ask for a short break from the conversation to go argue with thin air for a few minutes, so instead she tilts her head on one side like she isn’t quite convinced.  “Hmmm, I don’t know…”

To her frank astonishment, Harley reacts exactly as Claire seemed to expect him to, spreading his hands pleadingly and saying, “Come on, I know you’re big news up on the top levels--heck, you could have dinner with anybody you want, but I’ll pay, I’m not boring and I promise I’ll be really polite.”  

Julie finds that she actually believes him, but tries not to think too hard about it.  This’ll only be more difficult if she starts regretting it.

“Okay!” She says, mustering a charming businesswoman’s smile.  “Since you asked so nicely!”

 _“Score!!”_ Claire squeals as they say their goodbyes.   _“Not bad for your first time, now get over to my pod_ right now _, okay?  I want details and we need to talk strategy and--ooh!  Coordinate your outfit for the daa-aaaate!”_

“See you in five, Claire,” says Julie, her mouth quirking up in a familiar exasperated smile.  Her best friend is still giggling when she shuts down the comm and speeds up, her heart racing.  Hacking into Kane Co.’s servers, sneaking around, prying into her father’s business, that’s all one thing.  Conducting an investigation while on a _date_...is entirely another.  It’s a good thing Claire is here, honestly, because Julie has no idea what she’s doing.

She’s climbing into a transport pod, wearily keying in her password, when her comm lights up _again_ .  Julie, who’s _really_ not in the mood to deal with her dad’s demands and interrogation right now, opens the call ready to snap and then stops abruptly.

“-- _Texas?_ ”

 _“Hey Bessie,”_ says Texas.  In the background of the screen, the other boys are...not exactly arguing, but definitely talking louder than usual.  Dutch sounds tense and Chuck’s voice is rising in both pitch and volume as he gets more upset.   _“So it’s lame down here and we’re down a car and you need to get your butt in a car and on the streets, okay?  Okay.”_

 _“Texas!”_  Dutch, apparently distracted from whatever they were arguing about, appears in the screen, taking up most of it with hair.   _“You can’t just call up to Deluxe!  Man, you’re gonna blow her cover!”_

 _“Pssh,”_ says Texas.   _“You were the one sayin’ we needed her down here.  Fight night!”_

Oh god, the fight.  Julie was so worried about the mess with Harley, she almost managed to forget.  But if he _does_ know anything, she can’t let it wait.  She needs to know whatever she can, as _soon_ as she can, and if Harley is as busy as he seems to be, the odds are good cancelling now will cause delays she can’t afford.  

Well, this is going to go down well.

“Guys, I…” Julie hesitates for a second, and then sighs.  It’s going to come out eventually anyway.  The sooner the better.  “I can’t.  I...have a date.”

“ _What_?” says Chuck, staring.

“A date!  I...I think I might have found...someone who knows more about Blue, okay?  There’s this Kane cadet called Alex Harley and this just turned out to be the best way to talk to him!”

 _“What makes you think he knows anything?”_ asks Dutch.

“Just...some stuff he’s said!  He had a hurt leg and he said he couldn’t tell me how he got it because it was ‘top secret’.”

 _“Sounds like he was showing off,”_ says Dutch.

 _“Oh, yeah!”_ Chuck interjects, looking up from his monitor.   _“Like you do for Tennie, right?”_

 _“I do_ not-- _”_

 _“Yeah you do,”_ Julie and Chuck chorus.  In the background of the video feed, Texas pauses in his aggressive pummeling of the punching bag to laugh at Dutch, who sits back in his chair, looking disgruntled.

_“Fine, but I stand by what I said.  You don’t know there’s really something top-secret going on.  And--are you sayin’ what I think you’re sayin’?  That this Harley guy is Blue?”_

“Maybe,” says Julie defensively.  “And--even if he isn’t, it’s the best lead I’ve gotten in weeks!  We’re running out of options!”

 _“Maybe you could make it a double date,”_ Chuck suggests, excessively casual.   _“Like, you know, if Claire wanted to come with you and...she needed...someone…”_

“...To go on a spy-date with her in _Deluxe_ ?  In   _Kane Co. Tower_?” Julie finishes for him, raising her eyebrows.  Chuck giggles nervously.

_“Uh.  Yeah, maybe not, huh?”_

“I think it’ll be easier for me to get information out of Harley alone,” says Julie.  Not that she’s sure she _will_ get any information out of him.  She’s never tried something like this on anyone but her dad.

 _“Yeah, but does he even lift?”_ asks Texas.  Julie opens her mouth, then closes it again, squinting at him in confused silence.

_“I’m just sayin’, how many pounds can he press?”_

“Why does it _matter_?”

_“Law of Texas Number One: don’t date any dude who can’t lift at least a hundred and eighty.  Ka-chaw!”_

“But you--”

 _“Let it go, man,”_ murmurs Chuck, patting Dutch’s shoulder with the hand that isn’t busily tapping keys.  Dutch sighs through his nose, rolls his eyes, and turns his attention back to Julie.

_“Okay.  Alright.  Just...get back as soon as you can, aight?  We need you down here.”_

“Yeah,” says Julie, managing a small smile.  “I know.”

\--

Harley apparently doesn’t have much extra time in his day--most Kane Co. trainees don’t--so Julie’s supposed to meet him right after evening combat training.  She knows her way to the room and makes her way there extra early, nervously rehearsing possible scenarios in her head.  What if, _what if, what if, be prepared_ …

She gets there with five or ten minutes to spare, which helps.  Julie’s good at thinking on her feet, but she’s even better with a little time to observe and plan.  The door of the training room is open, and she leans casually against the opposite wall, searching the milling pairs of bodies in identical uniform tank tops and shorts for any sign of Harley.

He’s easier to spot than she expected, and he’s doing pretty well, for a guy with an injured leg.  Julie isn’t surprised to see him in combat practice despite the leg, but it does send one of those weird, twisting pangs through her chest.  Kane Co. policies.  Her father’s policies.   _Tough it out, cadets._

Harley is tall enough but not very heavy, especially compared to the cadet he’s fighting.  Still, he _is_ light on his feet.  As Julie watches he side-steps a heavy hammer-fist and cuts in close, throwing out a punch and catching the heavyset young cadet across the temple.  Quick, easy, almost casual, but powerful enough to make his opponent’s head snap to one side.  The guy tries to return the blow, but staggers dizzily across the mat instead, clearly disoriented.  Harley catches his shoulder, grinning, and the guy gratefully takes a seat at the side of the mat.

It’s at this point that Harley, looking for all the world like one of his KaneBook selfies, pulls up the bottom of his tanktop with both hands and wipes his face down with the thin cloth.  And then he glances right at Julie.  It’s just for a moment--no lingering eye contact or suggestive eyebrow-wiggling or anything, just a covert peek.  He knows she’s here and, Julie realizes, trying furiously not to blush, was checking to see if she was looking.

 _Let him think it_ , she tells herself firmly.   _That’s good.  The date needs to go well, he needs to think you like him, it’s okay._

He doesn’t look at her again after that, or if he does he’s very good at hiding it.  She does get to watch him take down three more cadets, though, still light on his feet, favoring his good leg and spinning neatly away from any kicks directed at his injured side.

And then another commander steps up to the mat.  Julie can’t hear what he’s saying, but from the way he spreads his arms and gestures at Harley--and the way the rest of the room’s occupants have started gravitating towards the pair--something’s about to go down.  Harley shifts from side to side while the man talks, loud but indistinct in the wide, echoing space.  He seems supremely unconcerned, even reaching down once to massage his leg and stretch his hamstrings.

He’s still bent over, stretching, when the other commander tries to drive a knee into his face.

A few minutes later, Harley emerges from the locker door, still unscathed, towelling down his shaved head.  He grins when he sees Julie, and Julie smiles back and then, pretending to duck her head shyly and brush back her hair, murmurs _“...okay, Claire, let’s get this thing started_.”

Claire answers, but whatever she says is drowned out as Harley jogs up, still limping a little.  “Hi,” he says, a little awkwardly.  “Ready to go?  Sorry I kept you waiting.”

He wanted to show off a little bit for her.  Julie giggles and punches him on the shoulder a couple times, intentionally pulling them, keeping her form unsteady and weak.  “Look at you!  You were so cool out there.”

Harley lights up with pride.  “Yeah?”

“Totally!”  Would it be too much to grab him by the arm?  Probably.  Julie settles for falling in by his side as they head toward the door.  She can feel people watching them as they go--other cadets, commanders with the stars and sabers on their arms.  She’s not well-known, but there are good odds that news of this will filter up to her dad sooner or later, and she _needs_ to get all the info out of him that she can before that happens.  Julie has never tried dating somebody before--god only knows how her dad is going to take it.

“So,” she says, and flips her hair over her shoulder.  “Where are we going for dinner?”

\--

Five minutes into dinner, high on the side of the tower looking out over the city, it becomes fairly apparent that Harley’s idea of interesting conversation is about on a level with Chuck’s, albeit masked by a thin veneer of charming self-confidence.  Julie thinks for a moment, half-listening to Harley’s descriptions of new alloys and repulsors and elite implants, that the two of them would get along famously. If...well, if they weren’t a Burner and an apparently very loyal Kane Co. R&D scientist.  Harley, apparently keenly aware that Julie technically outranks him on the Kane Co. hierarchy, makes no secret of the fact that he _loves_ Kane Co., and he’s just _so grateful_ that they’re showing interest in his proposals.

The issue is getting him to say what those proposals are.  Julie almost catches him out once or twice, gets the start of sentences like “The power cells I had to adapt for our new--” and “My plans to test the effectiveness of my--” before he cuts himself off and busily applies himself to eating again.  Julie taps her foot restlessly under the table and keeps her sweet, innocent smile on her face.  

“It’s a pity you can’t talk about any of the really _interesting_ stuff we’re doing down in R &D,” she says, after the fourth or fifth time he starts and then cuts himself off again.  It’s a bit of a low blow, she knows--he’s kinda boring, but it’s still cruel to shut him down by telling him so.  Slip in a “we”, a “down in R&D”, to remind him that she’s part of the company--higher up than him, management intern, he should _know_ that and if he’s Blue and he knows who she is then _why_ is he still keeping secrets from her--?

And then, just as Harley is opening his mouth, leaning in conspiratorially, a screen pops up to his left.  Unlike most message tabs, the reversed text isn’t visible from the other side; it’s been scrambled for privacy.  Julie resists the urge to grit her teeth and curse as he leans back to glance at the screen, but it’s a close-run thing.  She watches instead, intrigued, as Harley does a sharp double-take and then gapes at the screen, all pale face and big, round blue eyes.  He stands up abruptly.  “--I’ve got to go,” he says, and reaches for his jacket.  “--I’m sorry, I--I didn’t know they would want me to--sorry.”

“What?”  Julie’s heart pounds suddenly harder, faster against her ribs.  “You’re leaving?  Why?”   _Play it cool, Julie, play it cool_ … “...w-was it that boring?  God, I’m sorry…”

Harley looks pained, but doesn’t stop.  He tries to pull his jacket on, fails, tangles up an arm instead and then gives up and just throws it over his shoulder.  “No!  No, it’s just work.  Something came up, Mr.--m-my boss--wants me back up at the tower, right now.  Sorry.  I’ll make it up to you!”  He’s already starting for the door.  Julie stays in her seat until he’s vanished through the door, then immediately slips out of her seat and hurries after him, comfortable in the knowledge that any nearby onlookers will think she’s just a girl chasing her date after he flaked out on her.

_“Julie!  Julie, what’s going on?”_

“He left,” Julie murmurs, striding towards the door.  “I’ll call you back later, okay?  Date’s over.”

She hardly waits for an answer from Claire before shutting down the connection, and if there’s a twinge of regret over that it’s muted by the frustration of this newest failure.  She’ll apologize to Claire later.

A quick glance to either side when she leaves the room tells her he’s heading left, the same direction she would go if she were heading for her father’s office.  Alright.  Security is tighter the higher up you go, but she should still be able to follow him far enough to confirm his destination.

Harley pushes into a crowded elevator, going down, and Julie slows her pace with a sigh.  So...not Kane’s office, then.  She should have known this would turn out to be a dead end.  Even if Harley’s working on one of his secret projects in R&D right now, there’s no way she can get in and not much she could find if she did.  The crowd around the department will have dispersed by now, and with no cover and fresh guards just after shift change she would be lucky to even get within fifty feet of the door.

God, what a depressing evening.

By all rights, she should head down to Motorcity immediately.  But Harley doesn’t seem to be up to anything and Julie is tired.  She misses how things used to be--hanging out with everyone, and laughing for real, and being relaxed.  

And Mike.  A physical pain in her chest accompanies the thought, suddenly raw again now that she’s thinking about it all again for the first time in days.  She’s tired and she misses Mike.  And she could visit the rest of the Burners, but she knows they’re just as tired as she is.  She could visit Claire, but she doesn’t want to _talk_.

Julie goes to take a nap.

She’s not walking fast, and there’s a lot of ground between the restaurant Harley picked and her pod; she gets most of the way down the tower, wandering, lost in thought, before the call comes in.  Julie glances down at the screen, half-expecting it to be Harley apologizing--and then does a double-take and ducks into a corridor off the main hallway to pick up the call.

“Dutch?” A staticky yell filters through the comm, and then a sudden rush of white noise.  Julie’s been in the Burners long enough by now to recognize the sound of an explosion.  “ _Dutch!_ What’s going on down there?!”

_“It’s Blue!”_

“What?” says Julie, her mind suddenly racing.  “Are--are you sure?”

 _“Someone’s wrecking stuff in one of the Amazons’ cars,”_ says Dutch.  He sounds out of breath.   _“We can’t see who’s driving it but_ everyone else _is_ _following it and we’re followin’ them!”_

“When you say ‘everyone else’--”

 _“If you can think of a gang, they’re here,”_ says Dutch.

“You guys have to find out if it’s really Blue,” Julie tells him urgently.  “Try breaking a window or--or _anything_ , just don’t let him get away without being seen!”

_“Way ahead of you, just get down here soon, alright?”_

“On my way,” says Julie, speedwalking out the door.  Would Harley have had time?  He left about a half-hour ago...Julie tries to calculate the amount of time it would take him to get dressed and go down in Motorcity as she steps into the elevator and keys in her floor number.  There’s a flash of movement in the corner of her eye and she glances up at the hallway outside to see--

Her father.  A sick jolt of nerves electrifies her skin and Julie immediately stares back down again, eyes wide.   _Not now, not_ now... _I have to go!  Quick, pretend to do something!_

Praying he didn’t see her looking up, she begins feverishly inspecting her nails--a pointless task, given how long it’s been since she spent any time outside of Deluxe.  They are perfectly clean and smooth.  Julie buffs them fastidiously on her shirt as the doors begin to slide together.

 _“Hold it!”_ Kane’s voice booms from across the hallway, and Julie peers intently at her cuticles.  Only a foot of space left between the doors now, _come on, come on--_

“Julie!”

She pretends to jolt out of her reverie, staring with innocent surprise through the inch-wide gap at the visible half of her father’s face.  Then the doors come together with their usual soft, anticlimactic _shwip_ , and the elevator races down, down, down at its top speed, and minutes later Julie is out the door and heading with purpose for the gate where Nine Lives is hidden.

“Alright, boys, how are you doing?” she mutters, dialing the Burners as her engine yowls, and the call goes through the moment she presses the gas.

\--

“Oh, we’re doing _fine_ !” Chuck screams, half out of fear and half to be heard over the chaos going on around him.  “Just _fine_ , I mean, if you think lasers and explosions and _like a million cars all going 300 miles per hour is FINE!!_ ”

“Trying to focus here!” says Dutch through gritted teeth, and fires off another shot at the car zig-zagging out in front of the pack.   The soundwaves crack the ground and send four or five of the gang cars swerving away, but Blue spins away from the soundwave, then hits the gas again, narrowly dodging a rocket from one of the Weekend Warriors chasing him. “Jeez, this guy’s impossible to hit!”

“ _I’m trying to lock onto him but--_ ”  Chuck lurches to one side, holding on tight to his seat, as Dutch spots a gap and speeds toward it, trying to push to the front.  “I’m--!!  I’m trying but he’s too far away, and these idiots keep blocking me off!”  

“ _Where is he goin’?_ ”  Texas sounds frustrated.  It’s a miracle he hasn’t engaged his battering ram and just hit the gas already, but maybe even Texas knows better than to try slamming through the wall of gleaming limos leading the chase.

“Wish I knew!”

One of the cars jockeying for space behind Whiptail revs abruptly, and there’s a grinding _THUD_ of metal on metal--Chuck squeaks a strangled “-- _Mikey, look_ \--!” before he catches himself.  “Dutch, there’s no room--”

“I _know!_ ”

“ _Gimme five minutes,_ ” Julie says.  “ _If I can cut around in front of him--”_

“What, and get _flattened?_ ”  Chuck laughs hysterically.

_“If I’m quick enough I can just fire my missiles at the car, or lay down an oil slick--”_

“ _No_ ,” says Dutch immediately, horrified.  “No pileups!  Everyone’ll just hate us more than they do already!”

_“Hey, no one hates Texas!”_

_“Then what do you think we should do?”_ snaps Julie, ignoring Texas’s interjection.   _“If I can get in there and stop him, I should--right?”_

“ _Can_ you?” Dutch asks, and then--”No, hang on, we’re headin’ down the Switchbacks, I need to concentrate!  Chuck, if you’re gonna throw up, just--just try not to get it on the seats!”

“Gee, _thanks_!”

The Switchbacks are hardly anything like their namesake at all--there are no hairpin turns on Motorcity’s highways--but the way this road winds back and forth through Deluxe’s power conduits makes it nearly as strenuous for cars traveling at 300 miles per hour.

Whoever’s driving the stolen racecar whips around the curves like an experienced drifter.  The Duke’s limousines are not so elegant, hardly short enough to fit in the turns, and as they stall the crowd of vehicles behind them like a clumsy blockade, the racecar eats up the miles ahead.

“Julie, you there?” Dutch asks, slowing to an easy 160 as the pursuing cars bunch together in a clamor of horns and belligerent yelling.

 _“I can see you guys,_ ” Julie says, and far above Motorcity on the winding roads leading down from Deluxe, a pair of headlights flash.  “ _I’m on my way down.  Holy crap,_ everybody’s _here?”_

“Finally workin’ together,” Dutch says bitterly, and jerks the wheel hard, ignoring Chuck’s strangled yelp, as one of the Amazon’s racers cuts through an impossibly small gap, so close to Whiptail’s side they’re practically scraping hubcaps.  “ _Hey, watch it!”_

 _“But where are they_ going _?  I mean, where’s Blue going?  The only stuff in this direction is the…”_  Julie trails off.  Dutch takes a sharp breath as one of the Duke’s limos swings wildly around a corner, coming within feet of his car as they take another turn.  

“The what?”

Chuck’s screaming abruptly chokes off.  “ _Oh,_ ” he says.  “Dutch…?”

“What?!”

And then a bulky jeep swings out of his way, and he sees what Chuck just caught sight of; the glittering spire of the Cablers Settlement in the distance, growing larger by the second.  Dutch gapes for a second, and then spits out a word his mother would be ashamed to hear him say and slams his foot on the gas.  “Tennie!”

The comm seems to ring forever.  Dutch hits the emergency switch on his dash--his speakers let out an earsplitting howl and the drivers in front of him swing out of his way as Whiptail comes up fast on their bumpers, accelerating with no intention of stopping.

“ _Dutch?_ ”

“Tennie, there’s trouble headed your way, you gotta get people out of the way--”

“ _What?  What kinda trouble?  Bots?”_

“Yeah I wish.”  There’s still a rank of black Skylark Buicks and limousines between Dutch and the stolen car, and there are more cars closing in on his bumper, closing the gap he came through.  “Somebody stole an Amazon car, there’s gotta be five, six gangs after ‘em right now and they’re all coming your way.  I’m gonna try to stop them but--”

In the distance, every glittering blue pinpoint of light on the Cablers’ Settlement flashes urgent red.  

“ _We’re evacuating now,_ ” Tennie says, hard and businesslike, and Dutch’s heart does a weird thing in his chest.   _Not the time,_ he tells himself, and shuts down the comm link to focus on the road.

A moment later, however, Julie’s icon pops up instead and says, _“I’m going to try and get down onto the highway ahead of the pack.  There’s an entrance ramp coming up!”_

Dutch can see the one she means, and her headlights approaching in the gloom, but the Switchbacks are evening out into straight roads again, and the air throbs with the ear-splitting, skull-pounding sound of every hotrod in the mob roaring into high gear.

“Don’t do it, Julie.”

_“What?”_

_“I’m with Dutch on this one!”_ shouts Texas.   _“It’d be mad cool, sure, I get it, but look, do you wanna die?”_

 _“I’m not going to die!”_ Julie snaps, and Dutch can _see_ her accelerating as the stream of cars rushes closer to the opening of the ramp.

 _“Yeah, but do you_ want _to, that’s the question, okay.”_

_“No!”_

“Maybe,” groans Chuck from the back seat, his voice thick with fear and nausea.  Dutch feels for him, but there’s no time to slow down.  He’s trapped behind a trio of black Buicks with 1, 2 and 3 painted on their sides, and unlike the other cars he’s passed, Rayon obviously has no intention of moving for him.  

“ _We’ve got maybe--_ maybe _two minutes!_ ”  Julie reaches the end of the ramp too late to drive ahead, but she swings into the pack anyway, forcing herself into the very first rows of cars--her signal cuts and fizzes for a second as other cars try to push her out of the way and she jerks her wheel and pushes back, slamming Rayon’s #3 car out of the way and accelerating into his spot.  “ _Can any of you get a lock on Blue?!”_

 _“Julie, whoa!_ ”  Texas sounds impressed.  “ _Not scared to mess up your paint job, that’s--_ ”

“ _CAN YOU GET A LOCK?!_ ”  The words snap like an order.

 _“Stronghorn don’t do_ locks _,”_ says Texas, snorting.   _“I’d hit these guys too, which, don’t get me wrong, not my favorite guys--”_

Dutch grimaces.  “Unless Chuck can rig something to make my sonic cannons less wide-range in, like, thirty seconds--”

“Which I can’t, no!” Chuck squawks angrily.

“Well if we survive, let’s look into it,” Dutch mutters, and then, to Julie, “What about your rockets?”

“Guys,” Chuck says, high-pitched with terror.  “Minute and a half!”

“ _Okay so Julie doesn’t wanna die, but he totally might wanna die?_ ”  Stronghorn swings in next to Dutch--Texas is halfway out of his seat, craning to see Blue’s car.  “ _If he doesn’t slow down he’s gonna go right into that thing!_ KABLAM _, no more Blue!”_

“He’s gotta have a plan!” Dutch shouts back, wrenching Whiptail’s wheel from one side to the other in a desperate attempt to pass the gang vehicles speeding ahead of him.  “Tennie should have everyone in a safe place by now, but if these idiots keep firing at him, they’re gonna hit the column and--”

Chuck interrupts him with a sharp, hysterical laugh. “Th--they wouldn’t do that, though!   _Right?!_ ” he squeaks, as the explosions following the wildly weaving stolen car draw rapidly closer to the base of the Cablers’ home.

“I don’t--” Dutch starts, and then his gaze floats upwards with dreadful slowness as a matte-gray limousine soars over the pack of cars, over the flying missiles, aiming straight for the stolen car.  And then whoever’s driving it-- _it has to be Blue_ \--swerves right at the base of the towering cables.  The car spins and drifts, and then vanishes in a cloud of black smoke and blue sparks as the missile limo smashes into the central column of the settlement, followed by a blinding barrage of laser blasts and projectiles.

 _“No!”_ shouts Dutch, and punches the gas as Chuck screams.

The Amazon car is on its side in the wreckage.  The glass is shattered; the driver’s seat is empty.  Julie hisses a curse and Nine Lives skids to a halt as the whole pack of cars pours out onto the plateau of the Cablers’ Settlement.  There’s a deafening screech of brakes as the gangs’ drivers stamp on their brakes and the air fills with the stench of burning rubber.  

Dutch is the first one out of his car, clambering up onto his hood and jumping from bumper to chassis to hood across the gridlocked cars.  There’s no sign of Blue.  The limousines and missiles have torn five or six jagged, gaping holes in the walls of houses and maintenance hubs across the side of the Settlement but the houses are all empty.  Rubble, but no bodies.  Dutch’s knees almost give out.

“Where is he?”  Texas comes pounding up, gunchucks out, staring around.  Behind Dutch, people are honking horns and yelling at each other--he barely hears them, just stares blankly at the empty wreck.  “Dutch?”

“ _Nobody else called ‘em,_ ” Dutch says numbly.  “If I hadn’t told Tennie…”

“Yeah, but where _is_ he?” barks Texas, fingers twitching on the triggers of his gunchucks.  “Did you see ‘im?  Was it Blue?”

“Dunno.”  

“Heads up.”  Julie jogs out of the press of cars and yelling people--she’s got her boomerang out, and her expression is very hard as she glares toward the wreckage.  “ _We’ve got company_.”  

“Well ain’t that a holler’n a half?”  Junior hops over the jam of cars at the front, staring at the wreckage.  “He went and vaporatized hisself!”  

“Nobody in there?”  Foxy’s normally smooth voice is tense.  “Lucky for whoever was drivin’.  If they’d still been in there when I got up here, I’d--”

“Oh?”  The Duke is stomping forward, red in the face, fists clenched.  “I wanna _hear_ this!  See, that didn’t _drive_ like a stolen car!”  

“Did somebody _ask you?”_  Foxy hisses, tight with fury.  Her other drivers are gathering behind her, fierce and defensive, all leveling furious stares at the Duke and his cohorts.  “Get out of my face, Duke. I’m not in the mood for your screeching right now.”

“Oh!  Haha _whoa now!  No!”_ The Duke throws up his hands, turning to the gangs gathered around as if to say _can you believe this?_ “You’re gonna pay for leadin’ us on this little _wild goose chase_!  Ain’t _no_ place for that hoo-ha in _my_ city!  Just you _wait_ until tonight! ”

“Why wait?”  Foxy stalks forward, pushing into the Duke’s space.  “Let’s figure this out _right here and now!_ ”

“What?!”  Julie steps forward, too frustrated for fear, and the Duke blinks at her as if he’s only just noticing that the Burners are there..  “That’s ridiculous, you can’t have your _fight_ after this!”  

The Duke rolls his eyes so theatrically his sunglasses almost fall off, but there are bitter murmurs of agreement in the crowds around him, and even his own men and women are looking kind of scorched and less than enthusiastic.

“Well-- _fine,”_ says the Duke.  “She gets another day.”

Foxy laughs very audibly, acerbic and scathing.  The Duke glares at her, and for a second all of the Burners start to move forward as things threaten to get ugly again.  But then a voice yells “ _What do you guys think you’re_ doing _?!_ ” and all heads turn, conflict forgotten, as a group of shaken, angry-looking Cablers come crowding down the winding road to the settlement, with a slight figure at their head carrying a laser wrench like a conqueror’s sword.

Tennie is angrier than Dutch has ever seen her.  She marches right up to the closest gang members--a scorched and dazed group of Weekend Warriors--gesturing fiercely with a wrench and already shouting as she comes. “Do you know what you _did_?  Do you know what’s gonna happen if you keep running your dumb jeeps into my structural supports and punching holes in our infrastructure with your stupid rockets?!”

“Well, little lady--” AJ begins, and Dutch winces.  

“Our defenses will _fall apart_ and then Kane’ll send down another KMG and this time who knows if the Burners will be able to stop it and thousands of people will be left homeless or _worse_!!” Tennie screams overtop of the old man’s reply.  The yell echoes, ringing in the sudden silence, and despite all their assembled might and manpower, none of the gang leaders or their followers seem capable of looking the Cablers in the eye.

“We’d stop it,” Dutch assures her a little tentatively, but Tennie doesn’t relax when he puts a hand on her shoulder.  When she glances back at his touch, her eyes are full of furious tears.

“You guys can’t be everywhere at once, Dutch!  You’ve got enough on your plate with Kane attacking all the time and Mike missing without having to deal with these idiots!!”

She stands there, breathing hard and glaring around at her silently dumbfounded audience, and Dutch is glad, so glad, that she found the right words to stop them, at least for now.  They hurt, but she’s right.  She usually is.

“You’ve done enough damage for the night.” Bracket steps forward, wrapping a colossal arm around his daughter’s shoulders, glaring out at the assembled gangs.  “We need to regroup and have the meeting tomorrow instead.  Now...get away from our home.”

“Tomorrow night,” says Foxy, still watching the Duke as the crowd slowly starts to disperse to their cars.  “Let’s settle this.”

“Oh, I’m gonna settle it,” says the Duke, and spins on the heel of one gator, stalking back toward his car.  His voice drops as he passes the Burners, a low, vicious snarl that’s somehow a hundred times scarier than all the yelling combined.  “... _permanently_.”

[ ](http://livelivefastfree.tumblr.com/private/image/148414701111/tumblr_obcqonC5EN1vp6uo4)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A relatively short chapter this time, but this seemed like a good place to cut it off. Who wants to see Foxy fight the Duke?! None of the Burners, that's for sure, but in my heart I'm excited for it. What could go wrong?  
> (Literally everything, probably.)


	5. Foxy vs. The Duke of Detroit!  And the Winner Is...?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julie and her dad get in a big fight, but not as big as the one happening down below. Will there be a riot? Will Texas lose Stronghorn in a bet? Is Chuck going to survive all these panic attacks? What's up with this mysterious transmission for the Burners? Tune in and find out!

 [](http://splickedylit.tumblr.com/private/image/149745733703/tumblr_ocrz4nmUzl1rz9wo6)

 

Julie knows on some level that she should be afraid, entering her father’s room after receiving his shortest, angriest summons yet-- _”Julie, my office.  Now!”_ \--but she’s too furious with him for _everything_ and too preoccupied with the situation in Motorcity to let the fear rise.  The doors slide open and she strides through, looking boldly around.  Her father is there, turning to look at her as she walks in--but no masked figure in white and blue, she notices.  She’d be surprised at this point if he was ever allowed near her again, even in uniform.

Unusually, Kane starts walking to meet her instead of waiting for her to reach him, summoning a screen with a wave of one hand.  There’s a picture on it--no, she thinks as they draw closer to each other, video feed.

“Julie, this is _unacceptable._ ”

It’s footage from one of Deluxe’s countless, ubiquitous security cams, of her and Harley sitting at their restaurant table, eating and chatting.  Julie’s anger intensifies.

“It was just dinner!”  And even if she did have ulterior motives, even if there are plenty of reasons for her to just let Harley take the brunt of her father’s rage, some part of her is defensive.  She’s _allowed_ to date people!  If she really did like Harley that would be _her_ business, not her father’s and definitely not Red’s!  “We just talked!”

“I don’t care!”  Kane is drawing himself up--Julie squares her shoulders and refuses to be intimidated.  “I don’t want you seeing him again!”

“ _Dad!_  That’s so not fair!”

“It’s not safe!  You’re too young for--”

“But not too young to learn how to run a _company_?”

“That’s different, Julie.”

“You’re right, it is!  Dating is a normal teenage girl thing!  Lessons in being a ruthless CEO, _that’s_ different!  That’s _weird_.”

“I’m just trying to keep you _safe._ ”

“I _am_ safe!” Julie shouts, even though she hasn’t felt anything of the sort for weeks now.  “I am _safe_ and _secure_ and--and--I’m _fine_!”

“If you feel _secure_ ,” Kane growls, “--why do my sources say you still have nightmares?”

The bottom drops out of Julie’s stomach.  “--Your--” but there’s only one person who he could be talking about.  “You’ve been having him _spy_ on me?!”

Kane doesn’t look chagrined.  “It’s for your own good, sweetie.”

“Oh, _he’ll keep you safe, honey_ ,” Julie mimics at him, puffing out her chest and propping her hands on her hips in a mockery of his much bulkier build, “-- _I’m just worried about you sweetie, here’s a_ spy _to watch you_ sleep!”

“It’s my job to keep you safe, and it’s _my_ business how I choose to do it!”

Julie takes a deep breath, mouth open to yell, and finds out that it really is possible to be too angry for words.  It takes her another few furious, breathless seconds to find words again.  “You--that--this isn’t _fair!_  This is _stupid_ and--and _Mom_ would never have spied on me!!”

Her dad jerks back like the words are a slap.  Julie turns on her heel, scrubbing at her eyes furiously as they start to burn, and storms out of the room.

The corridor outside is deserted, like it always seems to be--except for one tall, dark figure leaning against a wall.  Even more than usual, Julie would like nothing better than to hit Red so hard his stupid visor cracks right in half.  But it’s practically instinct by now; she’s back-pedalling with a high gasp of feigned alarm before she can give in to temptation.  She swallows the lump in her throat, though, and blinks away encroaching tears furiously.  It doesn’t matter what kind of act she’s putting on in front of him, he doesn’t get to see her cry.  How she really feels is none of his stupid business, any more than it is Blue’s.  When she speaks, her voice is appropriately shy and fluttery.

“Wh-what are you doing out here?”

Red doesn’t answer for a long second.  He’s watching her from behind the mask, arms crossed, tapping a finger slowly on the opposite  forearm like he’s thinking.  Julie glances back--no sign of her dad following her.  The last thing she wants right now is to have him around, but...being alone around Red makes the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

“ _I didn’t think you’d stoop low enough to actually go after that_ bottom-feeder, _Harley,_ ” Red says finally.  “ _You’re full of surprises, aren’t you_ Miss Julie?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Julie, trying to put on the affected disgust of Claire faced with a particularly undesirable would-be suitor.  Her chest still feels tight, choked.  She shoves that feeling down hard.  “I’m going back to--”

“Full _of surprises,_ ” Red repeats, and pushes himself up off the wall, blocking the way down the corridor.  He’s taller when he’s standing within arm’s reach--Mike’s height, and Julie’s spine prickles with irrational hatred at the thought.  “ _And people think_ I’m _wearing a mask._ ”

“I told you,” says Julie, and takes a step back as he moves closer, leaning over her.  “I _don’t know what you mean._ Get back, or I’ll tell my dad!”

“ _You’re not what you’re pretending to be_.”

For just a second, Julie’s mind flashes to the gear in her backpack upstairs, to Red’s black-gloved hands pulling out hacking tech with the Burner logo stamped on it, turning it over in front of hidden eyes.  But a second later he goes on, still advancing on her, voice dropping to a sharp, almost secretive hiss. “... _you’re no weak little girl.  You’re_ his _daughter.  I can see it in your eyes, you’ve got..._ fire.   _You know you’re going to be in control someday and you_ want it.”

So much for keeping everybody in the dark.  Julie drops her hands, stops cringing and looks straight into his blank visor, looking for the eyes behind the glass.  There’s nothing to see, but some part of her almost believes she can feel the moment their eyes lock.  

“...What do you want to hear, _Red_?”  she says, and it’s an incredible relief to say the name with all the dislike and disdain she’s ever felt toward him.  “Is there a point to this?”

Red releases a breath, a hoarse huff through his mask, and straightens up.  “ _There you are.”_

“You know if I went to my dad crying about you, he’d have you thrown off Kane Co. tower,” says Julie, as evenly as she can, and Red makes a noise that might be a laugh.  And then, suddenly, he goes still.  Looks back at Julie sharply.

“...’ _Red’?_ ”

Oh.   _Shit,_ shit shit.  Julie rolls her eyes to gain herself time, thinking fast, keenly aware of Red’s advantage--he can see her face, but all she can see on the visor of his helmet is her own reflection.  

“...that’s what Blue calls you.”  And then, a wonderful, terrible thought occurs to her--she slips back into high-pitched sighing, bats her eyelashes.  “...y’know, when...when we talk.  I call him Blue, because he’s--”

“ _Stop it._ ”  Red sounds so frustrated it’s almost funny.  Julie resists the urge to grin at him and looks demurely down instead.  “ _What do you mean,_ talk?!”

“Just...talk.  About how…” Julie pauses, covers it with a sigh, inventing wildly.  “... _strong_ and cool he is…”

“ _I know you’re trying to provoke me!_ ”  Red pounds a fist against the wall--Julie forces herself not to flinch, to watch him as coolly as she can.  “ _There are things you don’t know about him,_ Kane.”

The use of her family name sends a sudden, sharp jolt through the pit of Julie’s stomach.  She doesn’t mean to drop the act again, but her next words come out sharp and almost harsh, like her dad snapping at an employee who’s disappointed him.  “I.  Don’t.   _Care._ ”

Red stays still and silent for a long second, staring at her.  Then he hisses in frustration and pushes himself away from her.

“ _Just remember,_ ” he says, and walks away, noiseless on the white tile.  “ _If--_ when _he betrays Kane--I’ll be there.  And I’ve got permission to rip his arms off if he hurts you.”_

“What?”  Julie stares after him--Red keys in a code sharply, not looking back.  “Wait!  What are you talking about?  My dad gave you permission to--?”  But Red is already gone.

Well.  That was more a loss than a win, in a lot of ways.  Red seeing through her smokescreen of vapid innocence was an unexpected and unpleasant shock.  But he isn’t as perceptive as he seems to think he is-- _not what you’re pretending to be,_ indeed--and she did get some things out of it, even if they brought up a score of new questions about Blue.  Why does her dad seem to think of him as an expendable asset?  Why would he put _Red_ in charge of an actual Kane Co. employee?  And if he doesn’t trust Blue, why would he assign him to be Julie’s bodyguard?  If Blue _is_ Harley, why is he allowed to watch her sleep but not date her?

Julie likes puzzles and mysteries, but on top of everything else this one just feels like an impossible weight, too much to bear, too twisted up in all of her secrets to share with her friends.  There’s no super-soldier outside her room when she finally reaches her door, and she deadlocks her pod but it doesn’t make her feel any safer.

Julie cries into her pillow for a long time that night.  It’s not just for her dad--she was so angry, but she can still see the look on his face when she mentioned her mom.  She promised herself she would never do that.  And she cries for Mike, missing and probably in pain somewhere she can’t find him.  For the city she’s failing to save, and the other Burners and the fear she can see in their eyes every time they’re together.  She cries because she’s tired, and angry, and because she misses her dad.  Misses her mom.  Misses being happy.

She must cry herself to sleep eventually, because even though she doesn’t remember closing her eyes she finds herself startling awake in the dark, sick and stiff and stuffy.  Outside the window, the buildings are all silently docked, the sky is pure black and empty of soaring pods.  She must have slept for quite a while.

“ _Time,_ ” she says hoarsely.

“ _The time is..._ Three.  Forty.  Two.  AM,” the voice of the Kane Co. computer system informs her calmly.

Julie should go straight back to sleep, but now that she’s awake again in the sober darkness, she can’t help remembering...  

Mom _would never have--_

Now it’s her turn to flinch at the words, the memory echoing like a high-quality recording.  Like she really knows what her mother would and wouldn’t have done.  Maybe she’s right, but she doesn’t _really_ know.  All she knows is that her dad hardly ever talks about her mom, seems to avoid even _thinking_ about her, and it seemed like the quickest, most brutal way to push all her hurt and betrayal back at him.

Julie gets up, pulls on her jacket and a pair of slippers, and detaches her pod from the Tower.  Without thinking about it too much, she enters the coordinates of another pod.  Usually she uses this function to find Claire and hang out in their merged living spaces, but there is one other place logged in its records.  Her pod slides smoothly out of its dock and soars into the empty night sky, sinking past the endless, glossy windows of Kane Co. tower.

The computer asks for a password when she reaches her destination--for just a second, Julie’s heart sinks, full of the heavy certainty that she messed up _too_ badly.  That she’s been locked out.  But when she keys in her Deluxe ID number, the smooth voice of the tower AI murmurs _“approved”_ and her pod silently docks.

Julie scrubs her eyes dry, sniffs once or twice, and then walks cautiously to the door and steps through into the other pod.

When Julie was little and the Deluxe residence pods were new, she thought her dad’s was the coolest place to live, _ever_.  Now, as she walks in past stacks of printouts and prototype devices overflowing from his crowded desk, it just makes her...tired.  

Her dad is at the desk in the corner, the one he used to share with Jacob.  A desk in his office, a desk here--Julie thinks he probably has one in every room where he spends any large amount of time.  It’s not exactly that he doesn’t know how to relax--he spends plenty of time at the gym and spa, and seems to genuinely enjoy himself--it’s just that even when he’s relaxing, he’s thinking about his job.

_And capturing your friends and destroying Motorcity,_ says a small part of her brain, but Julie is still so _tired_ and she doesn’t want to listen to it.  Not right now.  Not in this moment.

Her dad raises his bent head slowly when she comes in, but doesn’t turn around.  Julie fidgets, tugging at the perfect seam of her jacket.  

“... _I’m sorry,_ ” she says finally, very quietly.  “About what I said.  I didn’t mean…”   _I didn’t mean to hurt you_.  The words choke in her chest.  

Kane pinches the bridge of his nose once for a couple of seconds, and then slowly swivels in his seat and looks back at her.  There’s no anger in his face, he just looks...tired.  

“I don’t remember her,” Julie says, to fill the awful silence.  “And it was stupid, and--and mean, for me to say that.  I’m just really angry, and scared, and I don’t like having _him_ there all the time, and...and now he’s watching when I _sleep_?  It’s really creepy, _he’s_ really creepy, and you keep doing things without telling me, and last time you started doing big things your pod went d-down and--”

She doesn’t realize she’s tearing up again until he holds out a hand to her.  She’s too old to sit in his lap like she used to, but he pulls her down anyway, cradles her head against his chest and pets her hair as her eyes burn with fresh tears.  

“ _._..I’ll tell him to back off,” he says.  “I promise.  I’m just worried about my little girl. _”_

Julie didn’t realize how tense she was until she relaxed.  Her dad’s shoulder is solid and warm when she leans her head against it; his hand runs slowly through her hair.

“... _Thanks, Dad._ ”

They sit in silence for a long time, until Julie feels steady enough to sit up and wipe her face self-consciously.  She fixes her hair--pushes herself up and starts to stand, and then stops, startled, as her father’s hand wraps gently around her wrist.

“...I’m glad your mother doesn’t have to see what it takes to run this city,” he says quietly, and when Julie glances up at him he’s watching her face, eyes soft.  There are wrinkles at the corners of his eyes that she never noticed before.  The grey in his beard is starting to spread at his temples too.  “...but I wish she could see how much you’ve grown.”

Julie can’t do anything but nod silently, biting her lip.  The analogue clock on the wall, remnant of some other, older time, shows 4:35.

“I’m...gonna go get breakfast,” she says.  “You--did you sleep at all tonight?”

Kane frowns and folds his arms, but his silence tells her everything she needs to know.  Chest aching as she remembers every time she’s said something similar to Mike in the past, Julie says, “You should get some rest.”

“Hm.”

“I mean it, Dad!  Just--for once--I mean...please.  Just take a nap or something..”

As she turns her back to leave, he says, “I love you, Julie-bear,” and Julie feels her throat tighten again.  But she’s out of tears for the morning.

“I know,” she says.  “I love you too.”

Unlike most of the things she’s said to him recently, it isn’t a lie.

\--

It’s five in the morning when she reaches the cafeteria where she first met Harley.  This is around the time most cadets wake up, so she has a good chance of seeing him and maybe--just _maybe_ \--he’ll still want to talk to her about his _secret projects._ And sure enough, a couple of minutes after she comes in a flood of yawning young men in Kane Co. uniforms wander in, with Harley right in the middle of it.  Julie waves, trying to catch his eyes, then falters as the light from the windows hits his face.

Harley’s nose, which has slowly been fading from black-and-blue to greenish yellow since Julie met him, is freshly swollen and angry purple again.  There’s a new bruise on his cheekbone--that eye is swollen shut and blackened.  When he sees her waving he turns a sickly white, turns abruptly on his heel and all but sprints away from her.

Well, if Red had been threatening to tear off her arms, she’d be running too.  Julie gets her throat cubes and eats them slowly in a thoughtful frame of mind, barely sparing a shudder for their wobbly blandness.  Harley is a scientist, along with his impressive fist-fighting prowess and whatever else he’s capable of--from what she’s heard of Kane Co. R&D, her dad’s disregard for Harley’s safety checks out solidly.

Half of her hopes they’ll be on good terms again today, that he’ll show even half the gentleness he did at four in the morning.  The rest of her is well aware he’ll be busy and brusque and tyrannical as usual, and she hates it.  But if she’s lucky, he’ll at least give her some time in the evening to visit Claire, and she’ll be able to catch the fight in Motorcity.

Julie hopes the boys are doing alright without her.

\--

“I hope Julie’s doin’ better than we are,” says Dutch.  He raises his eyes to the underbelly of Deluxe, dark and vast above, grimacing.

Texas snorts.  “I’m sorry--no I’m not sorry--can you see me _owning_ this crowd right now?  We’re doing _awesome_!”

“We’ve been trying to get to the middle of it for like half an hour!” snaps Dutch.  “Chuck’s about to have a nervous breakdown!”

“I’m fine!” Chuck wheezes, looking like a scarecrow doing its best impression of a turtle in his efforts to avoid touching anyone in the press of bodies around them.  They’re only on the edge of the seething crowd of gangs, but he’s already been snarled at by more than one hostile-looking bruiser and he looks in very real danger of passing out.

“See?  Blondie’s fine.”

“Blondie--I mean, _Chuck_ is _not_ fine,” says Dutch.

“Well, whatever, it’s cool, we’re basically there anyway.”

The Fist is barely visible in the gloom over the heads of the throng.  Across the street from it, in the center of the crowd of regular Motorcitizens, the gangs are gathered in a seething mass of bright colors and hostile glares.

At first glance the crowd seems like sheer chaos, but the longer you look, the clearer the borders are.  Foxy and the Duke are sitting on the hood of their cars in the middle--other gangs are settled in around the nucleus of their respective groups, watching each other with obvious mistrust but not making any trouble under the watchful eyes of the Duke’s sharply-dressed minions.  

Texas starts pointing them out as more gang colors and uniforms filter in; Electroblades and Mama’s Boys, a gang from the south side with bones painted on their leather jackets and faces painted like the nightmarish combination of clown and skeleton.  A gang of heavily-padded androgynous figures in tattered football jerseys, faces hidden behind football helmets with darkly-shaded eyeshields.  Old women dressed all in denim and embroidered badges.

“ _Are they gonna fight?”_  Chuck is still doing his best to avoid touching anybody--every time somebody knocks him with an elbow or almost backs into him, he seems to get tenser, like a spring winding up.  “I thought they were fighting tonight, like, now.  At--at The Fist?”

“Shhh,” says Texas.  “Talkin’ first.”

“Wh--?”

“ _Arright, settle down!!_ ”

The murmuring of the crowd quiets down.  A scruffy, wizened-looking man has clambered up onto the hood of one of the parked cars, arms spread wide.  He’s wearing three layers of coats, each one more patched-up and battered than the next, and his face is even more deeply lined than Jacob’s, but his gravelly voice echoes out over the crowd at an impressive volume.

“We got a helluva fight for you tonight!”  he gestures to Foxy and The Duke, with a surprisingly elegant flourish.  “If anyone objects to these two shitpigeons kickin’ each other in the tuchus, speak now or forever hold your whinin’!”

_“Whhhhhh,”_ says Chuck, jaw slack.  Insanely, Foxy and the Duke bear being bossed around and called _shitpigeons_ with something like good grace.

“And this guy is…?” Dutch mutters to Texas as all around them fists shoot into the air and voices clamor to share their grievances.

“Old Engine,” says Texas, giving Dutch an infuriatingly pitying look.  “ _Duh_.”

“Old--”

“Yeah!  ‘Cause he makes people go!”

Chuck’s voice is barely audible, a thin thread above the shouting. “Okay, haha!  What’s his...real name, though?”

“Bro, I already told you, it’s Old Engine.  What do you want?  What is it, huh?”

“A _name_!”

“Phil.”

“Really?”

“No, Toothpick, but you wanted a name, you got a name!  Now shut up, we’re gonna miss our chance to talk!  God!”

“Toothp--”

_“Yes,”_ shouts Old Engine, and his voice is accompanied by a scream of feedback from the mic he somehow acquired, “you in the front!”

“Somebody’s making a mess out of our city, and Kane’s snapping up the leftovers,” says the oldest of the old ladies in denim.  “Yer all city center, yer not watchin’ the borders go down--”

“We’ve handled Kane before,” Foxy says dismissively.  

“Well he ain’t gettin’ _handled_ now!”

All the Burners bristle, and Texas starts shouting something, but his objections are swallowed by renewed roaring of the crowd.  Old Engine, apparently under the impression enough has been said about Kane, points to someone else.

“You!  Go!”

“Question for the Duke!”

“A-shoot,” drawls the Duke, spinning on the hood of his limo to face the man in the crowd.

“Why’d you call yourself the _Duke_ of Detroit and not the _King_ of Detroit?”

“Because I’ve got _class_ , unlike _some_ people I could name,” the Duke sniffs.

“ _Next!_ ” shouts Old Engine, while Foxy scoffs and mutters something to her Amazons.  From the Duke’s petulant glare, he doesn’t miss this.

“If the _Electroblades_ can be a gang, why won’t anyone join my moped gang?”

“I don’t see how that applies to this situation,” says Foxy, her low voice somehow cutting through the clamor around her.

“I’ll allow it,” says Old Engine, earning himself a dirty look from Foxy and a laugh from the Duke.

“Civillian!” barks AJ, stepping forward from his place in what looks to be Foxy’s side of the gathering.  “It is because mopeds are lame, hut-hut!   _Llama Apple Moped Exit,_ lame!  Hut!”

Uproar from the crowd.  Somewhere in the back, what sounds like a minor fistfight breaking out.  Chuck and Dutch stare around in something like horrified fascination as the pros and cons of mopeds are hotly discussed.

“ _Are meetings always like this?”_ Chuck mumbles.  Texas wiggles a hand ambivalently, grimacing as if to say _yeah kinda what does Texas know._  

“Yeah!”  Old Engine whips out a hand.  “You, glasses!”

“Yeah!”  A voice from somewhere distant in the crowd, almost drowned by the chatter.  “--where’s Mike Chilton?!”

A hush spreads.  Foxy and the Duke exchange a look, and then Foxy shakes her head slowly and the Duke gives an ostentatious shrug.  “--Hwell.  Couldn’t say.  Why--”

“Kane Co. took him!”

There’s a moment of silence.  Very slowly, Dutch and Texas turn to look at Chuck, along with the rest of the crowd.  Chuck, who looks like he’s already regretting his outburst, sinks down and huddles in on himself under the force of everybody’s stares, slowly going scarlet.  But Texas just turns back to the crowd and yells, “Yeah!  Kane took him.  We’re workin’ on it!”

“Wherever he is, he’s _not related to this fight,_ ” Foxy snaps.  “--Look, what are these kids doin’ here?  They’re _kids._ ”

“The Burners have the right to be here,” says Rayon, but he sounds very strained.  “They got no territory but you can’t deny what they’ve done for the city.”

“What _Chilton_ did,” the Duke says.  “But looks like their _star performer_ got some stage fright tonight, huh?!  You figured you were just gonna waltz on into a city meeting and not even bring your front man?”

Chuck and Dutch both worked themselves ragged in the make-or-break desperate rush to finish building B.E.S.S.I.E. before Kane’s Genesis Pod could wipe out the city; they both bristle.  Texas looks affronted.

“We _told_ you,” says Dutch.  “Mike got captured!”

“ _Dutch_ ,” says Rayon, giving a very small shake of his head.  Dutch ignores him.

“And now you’re sayin’ he’s _scared_ of you or somethin’?”

“Not _‘or somethin’’_ ,” says the Duke.  “He’s a naive, headstrong little man with morals and--frankly _terrible_ fashion sense.  Have you _seen_ that jacket?  I wouldn’t want to be seen next to me either if I were him.”

“Alright,” snaps Foxy, “this is ridiculous.  Get them out of here.”

“Agree with Miss Foxy, hut hut!  The small civilians should evacuate the area and the perimeter, ASAP!  As Soon As Possible!  Dismissed!”

“We’re not _that_ much younger than any of you!” shouts Dutch, in one of his unusual fits of temper.  “This is some BS!”

_“Get over yourself!”_ yells someone in the crowd.  “ _Go back to Deluxe!_ ”  

A clamor of agreement rises--Texas interrupts it by jumping up, whipping out both gunchucks and firing them up into the air.  “Hey!  What’re you tryin’ to say, huh?  Like sure, maybe Dutch can’t punch good--”

“What?”

“And maybe Chuck’s a nerd with noodle arms--”

“Dude!”

“--and Tracy couldn’t _be_ here, and Mike’s on vacation or whatever--”

“ _Get_ to the _point_ ,” drawls the Duke, glaring at Texas over his shades.

“--but we all think Deluxe _sucks_!” shouts Texas, gunchucks smoking.  “Deluxe!  Sucks!  Okay!  And Dutch thinks so too, or he wouldn’t fight bots and make--art--and stuff--’cause Deluxe thought his pictures were lame!”

“Okay, that’s--” starts Dutch, looking torn between gratitude and annoyance, but Junior interrupts him.

“Oh _yeah_?  If y’all think _Deluxe sucks_ so bad, why were you sniffin’ around all our gang property back when this shindig got on the road, huh?  Didn’t see the _Burners_ runnin’ around like chickens with their butts cut off ‘cause _their_ stuff didn’t get smashed up!”

Dutch sees Texas’s answer coming an instant before he opens his mouth--   _“Texas remember we weren’t gonna talk about Bl--”_

“There’s a Kane Co. dude with a helmet goin’ around makin’ trouble!” Texas folds his arms stubbornly.  “Pretty sure he’s the guy who took your cars.  Texas saw him handle a car almost as good as Texas can.  So fightin’ won’t do crap about it, stuff’s still gonna get stolen and blown up and junk.  And it _ain’t_ us.”

Well I don’t know about you,” says the Duke, over the murmur of the crowd, and looks around at the rest of the gangs meaningfully.  “--but _I’ve_ had just about enough talkin’.  Didn’t we have a reason to _be here_?”

“Hey--wait, but--”  Texas starts, but Old Engine slams a foot down on the hood of the car he’s standing on with an echoing _boom_ and Texas immediately subsides, scowling but silent.

“He’s right!”  Old Engine whips out a hand, and points at the looming shape of The Fist.  “Let’s get this jack-flappin’ show on the road!”

“Wait wait wait!” shouts Dutch, and a pair of men in suits and polished visors step impassively in his way, standing between him and the Duke’s limo.  “There’s _gotta_ be a way you guys can settle this without a fight!”

“ _We’ve already covered this_ ,” Foxy retorts icily, not taking her eyes off the Duke.  “We’ll back off if this guy admits he’s the one who paid those pathetic hillbillies to mess with my course!”

“Not so _foxy_ after all, huh?” snaps the Duke, who’s still spinning his cane furiously in one hand.  “You think I’m gonna back down now she’s gone and made it _personal_?! _AOW!!”_

“I think you should stop and think about how bad this could get before you decide--”

“It’s _already_ decided,” says Foxy coldly.  “It was decided the moment those tacky gators touched my turf.  It’s settled here, or it’s _war_.”

_“Tacky?!”_ howls the Duke, magnificently affronted.  “It’s war al _ready_ , sister!  Time for the main event!”  He whips his cane through the air, pointing it right between Foxy’s eyes.  “--meet me at the Fist.”

\--

When Julie gets there, roaring up to where the other Burners’ tracker beacons are clustered, the Duke is crowd-surfing toward The Fist.  An explosion has taken a chunk out of the sculpture but The Fist still hangs, a great disembodied arm, hand clenched, sullen black in the neon dimness of Motorcity.  Or it did, before a big gold and red boxing ring showed up in front of it and a bunch of spotlights were aimed at it.  At least the Duke didn’t decide that such a valuable piece of Detroit history would look better with a layer of gold leaf and D-U-K-E on the knuckles, Julie thinks dryly, and jumps out of her car to join the other Burners, gathered in a tight knot near the edge of the crowd.

“Please tell me they’re not really doing this!” she shouts over the chatter of the crowd, staring in dawning horror at the two masses of cars lined up across from each other in the street on either side of the boxing ring.  The Duke has just about made it to the sculpture by now; trailing behind him, with a kind of icy dignity, Foxy and her gang cut a swathe through the crowd.  People are packed in tight, but when Foxy stalks through the crowd they somehow contrive to be packed tighter to get out of her way, going silent.

“Uh, yeah.  No can do,” says Texas.  “Totally doin’ this.”

“Well someone has to stop them,” says Julie, her heart hammering.  The leaders of two of Motorcity’s most influential gangs, about to go at it...regardless of who wins, this can’t end well.

“Whoa, hey, no, also no can do,” says Texas, putting a hand on her shoulder.  “They said they were gonna fight, so they gotta!  That’s how it works!”

Dutch glares at him.  “Dude, whose side are you _on_?”

“Well, the odds are--”

“ _Enough with the odds!_ ”

“You!  With the legs!”  Old Engine gestures extravagantly to Foxy.  “Who’s your second?”

“...Angelica.”

A pale woman in a sky-blue Amazons jumpsuit strides forward to stand at Foxy’s shoulder, arms crossed, regarding the Duke and his gang with unreadable almond eyes.

“Yeah sure.  You!  Name a second, you skinny streak’a nothin’.”

The Duke spins almost gracefully on one heel and comes to a sharp stop leaning on his cane, one hand held out toward his terrifying second-in-command.  She throws off a diffident salute and then strides forward, head held high, hands folded behind her back.

“Who else but my _ravishing_ Number Two?”

“Seconds forward,” Old Engine commands imperiously, and Dutch does a double take--at some point in the past few seconds, the old man went from standing at the foot of the monument to sitting on top of it, feet hanging down against the enormous, pitch-black fingers.

Angelica and Number Two climb into the ring and the crowd falls silent.

“What are they doing?” Julie mutters to Texas as they watch the women approach each other.

“Gonna talk smack and tell everybody what they’re mad about,” Texas replies, in a distracted undertone.  “Shut up a minute, Jillian, Texas can’t hear the smack-talk!”

“Babs,” says Angelica, and shakes her head.  “You always were too good for this lunatic.  Pity the Amazons never make a second offer.”

“Ain’t lookin’ for one,” says Number Two impassively.  There’s a soft _ooh_ from the crowd.

“And I hope your _Duke_ isn’t looking for one today.”   _(Ooohh!)_

“Hey now,” says Number Two, snapping her gum with a grin, “we all live in Detroit, alright?  He’s _your_ Duke too, honey.” _(Oooohhh!!)_

“Explain again why this is so _important_ ,” says Chuck, pulling his bangs back on one side to squint at the ring.

“Listen, okay, Texas will answer all your dumb questions _later_!” Texas groans, rolling his eyes.  “Now shut up, I can’t hear!”

_“...Okay,”_ sighs Chuck, apparently too worn out to even object.  Julie pats his shoulder awkwardly and turns her attention back to the situation at hand.  Apparently at some point Number Two and Angelica segued abruptly into listing their boss’s respective complaints with each other, and it’s getting pretty heated.

“--never fully paid us back for that Selenium Sulfate last year!”

“Oh yeah?  Is _that_ why you guys and your little friends decided to mess with the Duke’s property?”

“If you’re talking about the Skylarks, they didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“The Duke thinks otherwise.  And now you’re with them?  You’re against _us_.”

“Then I guess there’s nothing else to be said,” Angelica retorts coldly, and turns on one neon-blue stiletto heel to stride away.  Number Two tosses her red-gold curls with a snort and does the same, nodding to the Duke.  He nods back with his characteristic shark grin and levers himself to his feet, rolling his head on his neck with a series of quiet, sharp pops.

By the time the Duke ducks under the ropes, Foxy is already in the ring--she’s stripped off the top of her suit and tied the sleeves around her waist.  The muscles in her back flex under her sports bra as she stretches.  The Duke whips off his tracksuit jacket with a dramatic flash of lights and flings it out of the arena.  Number Two snatches it casually out of the air and pops a bubble, watching impassively.  

“Al- _right!_ ”  he says, and pulls out a pair of red and gold boxing gloves, apparently from thin air.  “A-put up ya _Dukes!_ ”

“Uh,” says Texas, in the slow voice of someone coming to a new realization.  “That Duke guy _can_ fight, right?”

“...Sure,” says Chuck, but his voice wavers.  “I mean, he must be able to, right?  Like...last time we got in a fight with him, he...”

Watching the Duke dance and jab at the air in his corner of the ring, all of the Burners try silently to remember when exactly they’ve ever seen him fight someone face-to-face.

“...Mostly he just runs away,” says Julie.

“I dunno,” Texas mutters, narrowing his eyes at the Duke.  “He seems pretty punchy.  I’d rate him an eight on punchiness.”

“Out of how many?” asks Dutch suspiciously.

“Huh?”

“What does the scale go up to?”

“Texas level.”

“Does that have a numerical value?” asks Chuck, who seems genuinely interested despite himself.

“Yeah, it goes from one to Texas.  What do you want from me, dude?”

Chuck bridles, mouthing silently, apparently at a loss for words, but before he can get anything out Old Engine stands up, balancing precariously on the ancient sculpture’s knuckles, reaches into one of his coats and pulls out an old-fashioned brass bell and a mallet.  The sound of the bell bounces off the buildings, the crowd roars, and the engines of the cars parked on the outskirts of the ring throb as the Duke dashes forward, limbs flailing, all joints and stringy muscle.  Foxy is at least a head shorter than him, even in heels, but she moves like a switchblade, spinning and ducking with the same concentrated precision she has behind the wheel.

“Dang!” says Dutch, watching wide-eyed.  “Julie, did you know she could do that?”

It takes Julie a moment to answer, transfixed like the rest of the Burners on the fight.  “...Uh, maybe?  I always kind of thought she seemed like she was-- _whoa!_ ”

The rest of the Burners wince too as one of Foxy’s feet slips under the Duke’s guard and smashes into his throat.

“Well, okay,” says Texas, as the Duke staggers around, wheezing.  “...Maybe not an eight, maybe like.  A five.”

“He’s not really that bad,” says Julie, narrowing her eyes.  “It’s just…”

“Foxy’s too good,” Dutch finishes for her, and then flinches as Foxy lands another vicious blow, this time to the Duke’s ribs.  “That had to hurt!”

“Guys?” says Chuck, in the voice of someone who’s just starting to come to an unpleasant realization, “What’s gonna happen here...when the fight’s over?”

“Hopefully nothin’,” says Dutch.

Texas shakes his head.  “Hopefully a _riot_!  That’d be _way_ better than havin’ to pay back the Mama’s Boys if the Duke _loses_.  Especially since I bet Stronghorn.”

The other Burners explode in a chorus of _“Texas!”_ and  “ _You said you didn’t!”--a_ nd then abruptly share a heartfelt _“Ooohh!”_ as Foxy’s foot connects with one of the Duke’s skinny thighs.

They break apart for a couple of seconds after that, eyes fixed on each other as they move steadily around the ring.  The Duke isn’t smiling any more; he’s circling, fists still raised, lip curling.  They break their wary circling at exactly the same time, and the crowd roars as the Duke gives a strangled yell and stumbles, apparently tripping over his own impractical shoes--

And Foxy’s punch hisses through empty air.  The Duke turns his fall into a roll and, with all the almost inhuman agility he’s ever shown during one of his flashy entrances, springs up on both hands to kick her soundly upside the jaw.

“ _Told you_!”  Texas pumps a fist in the air, joining in the crowd’s clamor as Foxy staggers back, fists up to defend herself, shaking her head sharply like the blow dazed her.  “Told you!  Totally an eight!  Eight for punchiness!”

The Duke seems to share Texas’s excitement, exhorting the crowd to new levels of volume with hands raised, grinning again.  His lip is split; his teeth are bloody.

The next couple of seconds are...messy.  Foxy lunges forward again, still precise but not nearly as cool and amused, and the Duke spins around and then backpedals abruptly, ducking and weaving, staggering as her kicks come within inches of his face.  They lock for a second, pressed up against the Duke’s side of the ring, and then there’s a flash of gold and red and a crackling _ZZZK_ and Foxy staggers back with a sharp yell of pain.  The Duke wheezes for just a second, then pulls himself up and laughs triumphantly, spinning his cane from hand to hand.  Foxy pulls a hand away from her split lip and spits blood into the center of the ring.

“You cheating son of a bitch,” Foxy hisses, and the Duke’s cane crackles with electricity as he bares his teeth at her, more a sneer than a smile.  “This is a _fist fight._ I should have known you’d break the rules as soon as you started losing!”  She throws a dirty look at Number Two--the woman smiles at her, hands behind her back again.  “And don’t think I didn’t see you hand him that glorified cattle prod.”

“First thing I learned on these _mean streets,_ ” the Duke says, loud and harsh, and points his cane at her.  “There’s no rules in Murdercity, baby.  You cheat or you _lose_ and the Duke of Detroit doesn’t _lose_!”

The next few seconds happen very fast.  They dive forward at the same moment, and for a second they’re grappling, locked too close for either of them to take ground.  Then the Duke pushes free to bring his cane around, Foxy grunts sharply in pain as the air sizzles with electricity, and the Duke lets out his own cracked, piercing yell.  

They fall back again.  Foxy is panting, looking unfocused--she’s bitten through her lip as the electricity went through her and the air smells of scorched leather.  The Duke is groaning, clutching his side where a flower of bright, vivid red is blooming on the white fabric of his tank top.  

“ _Look who’s--cheating now,_ ” he says, but it comes out wheezy and strangled with pain.  “Bringin’ knives--to a fistfight!”  

Number Two pulls herself up into the ring with him and unceremoniously pulls his hands away from his side; from where the Burners stand in the crowd, the hilt of the knife in his side is a dark blot against the spreading circle of red.  It’s a pretty small knife, but it’s obviously buried to the hilt.  Across from him, Foxy is trying and failing to get up as some of her girls shake her shoulders and lean in to talk quietly to her, obviously scared.  

“This fight is over!”  the old man on top of the fist slams the hammer into the bell again, kicking his feet against the giant, chipped knuckles and watching the proceedings with apparent enjoyment.  “It’s a tie!”

The crowd is in uproar.  For a few seconds, Julie remembers what Texas said-- _a riot!_ \--and draws closer to the other Burners, looking from face to face and seeing the fear in Chuck and Dutch’s eyes.  Texas is shouting, oblivious to the shift in atmosphere as he crows at Junior.  “ _No one’s gettin’ Texas’s car today!  No one but Texas!  Wha-chah!!”_

And then the bell rings again, cutting through the cacophony of voices and snarling engines, and Old Engine bawls, “It’s _done_!  You ratsnacks ain’t gonna make trouble on neutral ground, are ya?  Yeah, didn’t think so!  Now _get off my lawn!”_

There’s an uneasy silence, during which Julie’s sure every gang member is wondering how long any neutral ground is going to stay that way.  And then Foxy sits up, swaying, and blearily waves a hand at her amassed allies.  Guns are holstered. The cars gathered around the ring back out and roar away, fading into the distance with a rumble like far-away thunder.

In the temporary calm, it’s Texas who charges forward to the ring and dives between the ropes, rolling as he hits the canvas and popping up a couple feet from Foxy and the Duke, who are glaring at each other again.  The other Burners follow at a slower pace, Dutch pushing up the ropes for Julie to crawl through and then following her up.  He glances questioningly back at Chuck, but gets a furious fit of head-shaking in response and lets it go.

“ _You._ ”  Foxy’s voice is ragged and slurred, and her eyes still don’t seem to be focusing right.  “...wha’dyou want.”

“Okay, well you’re like a nine on the punchy-scale and I figured you’d wanna know,” says Texas.  Foxy glares at him, but Texas doesn’t really seem to notice.  “--but hey, this is over now, right?  You guys said you were gonna end it, so--”

“ _This didn’t end_ shit,” the Duke hisses, gripping his side.  It’s almost frightening to see him so wan and haggard, but Dutch thinks privately that it’s probably a good thing the Duke didn’t have the energy for one of his temper tantrums--who knows what would’ve happened.  Maybe Texas really would’ve gotten his riot.

“But--”  Julie starts, but Foxy’s girls are pulling her arms over their shoulders and helping her to her feet unsteadily.

Number Two _tsks_ and scoops the Duke up in a mess of lanky limbs, settling him against her chest with no apparent effort and sliding over the side of the ring to land lightly on the ground.  “Open the door,” she orders the closest lackey, and turns her head to yell.  “Medical crew!  Get up here!”

“But you said this was going to be the end of it!”  Julie calls after them, but the Amazons have already swung into their cars and a team of men and women in red and gold scrubs are lifting the Duke carefully into the back of one of his limos.  “I thought--”

But they’re already gone, leaving the empty boxing ring silent and deserted.  Julie bows her head, drags her hands down her face, and tries to ignore the sudden, stinging burn in her eyes.  She’s not expecting it when a square, calloused hand lands on her shoulder, sudden enough to make her jump.

“...Come on, Sally,” says Texas.  “Let’s go home.”

The Burners limp back to the hideout in relative silence, discouraged and more than a little bit shell-shocked.  Jacob’s not around.  The building seems too big and too quiet with just the four of them there, and none of them seem to want to split off to their normal places around the building--they just sit, on stools at the counter or in the booth, everybody lost in their own thoughts.

“... _messed that one up pretty good, huh?_ ”  Dutch says finally, and Chuck lets out a sort of choked little laugh and everybody relaxes a little.  

“Wasn’t anything we coulda done,” Texas says.  His brows furrow.  “Well if we had a--”

“No, you’re right.”  Julie cuts him off, kicking her feet idly against the stool she’s sitting on.  “They were gonna fight no matter what.  It’s just--it’s so _dumb_!  They should know Kane’s their biggest enemy by now, why are they still fighting each other?”

“Yeah well people are dumb,” says Texas, with surprising vitriol, and kicks the booth.  “This is lame!  We should just--find Mike already!”

“Oh, sure,” says Chuck, his voice ragged and high-pitched with stress, waving a hand in the air like he can conjure Mike’s location from nowhere.  “I’ll just... _make that happen_!  Sounds good!”

“I wasn’t talkin’ about _you_ , I just said--”

“We’re doing our best to find him!”  Julie slams a hand down on the counter.  “Stop it.  Fighting isn’t gonna get us anywhere, okay?  We’ve got to do our best with what we’ve got down here and just-- _keep looking_.  We’re _all_ worried about--”

“...Mike,” says Chuck quietly.

“Yeah, well _duh_ ,” says Texas, and kicks the booth again.  “So we gotta find him!”

“ _Mike,_ ” says Chuck again.

“Yeah, dude,” Dutch says impatiently.  “Who do you think we’re talkin’ about?”

“No--”  Chuck pulls up a screen, and his voice and hands are both shaking.  “No!  I’ve got--I’ve got a call.  I’ve got a call from _Mike!_ ”

There’s a second of dead silence.  Then the others gather around, staring over his shoulders at the screen, dead silent, eyes wide.

For once, Chuck barely seems to notice the attention--he’s utterly focused on his screen, hands flying over the keyboard, mumbling nonstop under his breath.  “ _Aaahhh I can make this work--_ ” a string of indecipherably fast key-strokes.  “-- _come on please I_ can _, come on, work work workworkworkwork_ \--”

Dutch rolls his eyes.  “Sayin’ ‘work’ over and over again doesn’t make it work, dude.”

“What?” says Texas, frowning.  “It totally does!  Punchin’ it helps too.  Try punching your nerd screens, little man!”

“Hnngh!” says Chuck, and then the static on the screen fizzes and coalesces into an image.  A face.  Mike’s face, frozen, staring dazedly out at them.  His nose is bloody and bruised--it looks broken.  There’s a crusted trickle of blood on his chin and a nasty split in his lip.

“It’s not coming from Kane Co. tower,” Chuck murmurs, bringing up another window where a pulsing yellow dot marks a building near the outskirts of Deluxe.  “You think--”

But just what they might think goes unsaid, because just then the call goes through and the video starts to move.

“ _Guys,_ ” Mike mumbles, shaky and quiet.  His voice is hoarse and choked--when he lifts his head, there’s something smooth and Kane Co.-white around his neck.  A collar, with a red light blinks slowly against the skin of his throat.   _“--you there?”_

There’s a moment of horrified, painful silence, and then a clamor of noise as everybody talks at once-- _Mike!  Oh my god Mikey! Mike! Tiny!_  Mike sits up straighter, eyes wide.  

_“Hey!”_  he sounds bleary, but delighted.  “Okay-- _shh, sh_.”  He glances over his shoulder at something off-camera, then leans in closer.  “ _I don’t know--how much time I’ve got._ ”

“Where are you?!”

Mike shakes his head.  “...one of Kane’s prisons. I don’t know where--I know they’re moving me though, soon. Heard them talking about it outside my-- _nnh._ ”  Shifting his weight makes him wince.  “...outside my cell.”

“Moving you?”  Julie repeats urgently.  “When?  How long until they transport you?”

“Day after tomorrow,” says Mike, and glances up at the sound of distant running feet.  “-- _shoot._  Guys, listen.  I want you all to--”

“ _It’s coming from this cell!_ ”  somebody shouts, muffled, and Mike glances over off-screen, eyes widening.  

“ _I’ve got to go,_ ” he hisses, and then there’s a _BANG_ and the message cuts out.  Chuck half-gasps and throws out a hand to grasp at the empty air where the screen used to be, as if he could bring it back, and then there’s dead silence.  Even Texas is still and shocked, staring at the place where Mike’s face used to be.  The echo of Mike’s voice, a sound they haven’t heard in weeks, seems to hang in the air, making all the pain of losing him raw again.

But there’s something else, too.  And when Julie and Chuck throw up their screens in unison, fingers darting furiously over the keys, the new energy fills the room instead.  Texas cheers and Dutch sinks back into his seat with a smile growing larger on his face, yelling, “ROTH!  Buddy!  Jacob!”

“Jacob’s at a meeting,” says Chuck distractedly.  “We can tell him when he gets back.”

“Alright,” says Julie, absentmindedly patting ROTH’s exhaust pipes as he floats by.  Dutch opens his arms and wraps them around the little bot.  ROTH returns the hug, albeit with a series of confused chirps and beeps.

“Mike’s coming home, ROTH, we found ‘im!”

Roth pauses, completely still for just a moment, and then makes a great high-pitched, buzzing squeal and actually pulls Dutch bodily out of his seat, spinning him around.  Texas dodges away from one of Dutch’s flailing limbs, raising his hands defensively, but ROTH wraps him up and squeezes him too.

“ _Originated from...block 145 by 23,_ ” Chuck mumbles, and with a swipe of one hand a map of Deluxe zooms in on a square of buildings.  “This isn’t a residential block.  There’s nothing here.”

“That’s where the signal came from?”  Julie frowns, looking up at Dutch.  “...Hey, you have access to Jacob’s old files, right?”

“Uh, yeah, most of ‘em,” says Chuck.

“Can you pull up some old maps of Deluxe?”

Chuck doesn’t answer, but his mouth goes round and he ducks his head over his screen, typing furiously until a file box pops up on his left.  He flicks a finger across his screen, sending it flying across the room to Julie’s array.

“Thanks,” says Julie, opening it with a tap.

“My pleasure,” says Chuck, and smiles for the first time in what feels like years.

Julie spreads out ancient files, looking from scan to scan of building plans.  “Alright, there’s a backup generator system...that takes up most of the block, and then there’s a storage facility?  Three floors, underground.”

“Storage?”  Dutch detaches himself from ROTH’s happily-buzzing grip to look over her shoulder.  “Is it on the map?”

“Not the publicly-issued one.”  Julie chews on her lip, and then reaches out and snags Chuck’s screen, pulling the map of Deluxe over to her.  “Let me try something.”

“There’s definitely _something_ there.”  Chuck flicks a hand, slaps Texas away as he tries to poke the screen, and then finishes the motion overlays Jacob’s plans over the map of Deluxe.  “Either that or Kane’s pumping some serious power into a bunch of empty rooms.”

“-- _got it._ ”

Julie spreads her hands, enlarging her screen so everybody can crowd in to see it.  On her map, the blank facade of the Kane-Co.-issued map gives way, and a blacked-out square appears where there used to be blank ground.  

“Three floors,” she says, and taps the icon--a red _DENIED_ icon blares across her screen.  “...Classified detention facility.  I can’t get a blueprint--it’s running on its own network, that’s how they caught him so fast, but it gives us somewhere to start.  Now we know which prison he’s in, and they’re spamming transfer notifications to try and hide his location, but…” she runs her fingers over the list of readouts, fingers shaking minutely, and then taps sharply.  “ _There._  Somebody just got reassigned, eight minutes ago.  ‘Prisoner relocated: _unauthorized communication attempt with intent to escape._ ’  Guys, I think we found him.  It...doesn’t sound like they know his call went through.”  Julie rakes a hand through her bangs--she looks exhausted.  Chuck, who looks almost as haggard, wordlessly slides her his diagram of Kane Co. power conduits, overlaying another layer of detail over the map.  “Thanks.  So we know what prison he’s in, and it’s not going to be easy but it’s...doable.  Way easier than it will be after they move him and we have to start all over.”

“Well what are we waiting for then?!”  Texas slams a fist down on the table so hard it rattles.  “Let’s go get him!”

“We need a plan,” Dutch says firmly.  “We’re not going in and making it up as we go along.”

“It’s always worked out before!”

“ _Before_ we had Mike,” Chuck mutters.

“We’ll have Mike this time too,” Texas points out, a little sulkily.  “On the way out.  Not like we need him, though.”

“Guys--”  Julie frowns at her screen.  “...there’s something else here.  Look.  The same hub Mike’s message came through sent this to Kane’s personal channel a little while before Mike called us.”

The video is a lot clearer and steadier than Mike’s rushed transmission.  It’s still him, in the same chair in the same cell, but this video is wide enough to show more of the blank walls, the cuffs around his wrists and ankles and the bruises and raw scrapes on his bare arms.  

_“Wake up.”_

It’s a man’s voice; harsh, tense with anticipation.  Mike stirs and groans.  His nose is bleeding in a vivid red trickle over his lips and down his chin--by the darker, dried splatters on the collar of his shirt, not for the first time since his capture.  The way he sits is all wrong, slumped down and disjointed like a dropped puppet, head hanging.  

“... _’m awake,_ ” he slurs, and raises his head.  His eyes wander blearily.  “...wh…’s going on?”

“ _Say your name for the camera._ ”

Mike blinks.  Opens his mouth, shuts it again, opens it again, and there’s a kind of dizzy, confused fear in his eyes.  

“I’m,” he starts, and stops.  He starts again, more urgently, and the strange, childish frustration and distress in his voice are painful to hear.  “My name...it’s--my _name_ is--”

“ _What?_ ”  there’s a laugh in the voice, disbelieving and derisive.  “ _You don’t remember your own_ name?   _Our friend in the helmet hit you pretty hard that last time, huh?_ ”

“No, I’m Mmm…” Mike grits his teeth.  “ _Ch...chilton._ Mike--Mike Chilton!  My name is...Mike Chilton.”  He slumps, breathing deep--relief colors his bruised features. He shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear it; when he looks back up again, his eyes do look a little bit sharper.  “--what’s going on?  I--shouldn’t be here.”

“ _No, you’re_ right _where you belong now._ ”

Mike frowns.  “No.”

“ _Okay hotshot,_ ” says the man behind the camera, with mocking patience.  “ _Where_ should _you be?_ ”

Mike closes his eyes tight, and the chains pulls taut as he starts to reach up to his head again, grimacing like thinking is painful and exhausting beyond words.  “...Mmm,” he says, trying out the sound, and grits his teeth, back bowing under some invisible weight.  “Mmmotor...city.  I should be in--Motorcity.  Where am I?”

“ _Don’t recognize your old hometown, Mikey?_ ”

Mike sits up straighter, eyes narrowing.  “Don’t call me that.”

“ _Why shouldn’t I?_ ” There’s gleeful mockery in the voice.  “Mikey?”

“You can’t call me that!”  Mike pulls himself up, breathing harder, hands clenching.  “Why am I--”  his voice falters suddenly.  He shakes his head again.  Again.  “-- _no, I didn’t--_ what did you do to me?”

The video jitters to a halt on the picture of his face, and every Burner looks away from it after a moment, away from the fear in Mike’s eyes.  Julie reaches out and closes it, her eyes fixed firmly on her knees.

“...Okay,” she says, and clears her throat.  “...okay.  So...so maybe...Mike’s not gonna be able to help. We’re just going to have to do this one ourselves.”

“Texas has been training for this moment his _whole life,_ ” says Texas, and slams his hands down flat on the table, grinning like a madman.  “ _Planning montage._ ”

[ ](http://toastyhat.tumblr.com/private/image/149727469184/tumblr_ocr5a9rOYt1rpgisp)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Fist is a real Detroit sculpture with an interesting history we completely failed to address here. Look it up! Next chapter: PRISON BREEEAAAAAK~


	6. Do Or Die!  The Mike Retrieval Mission!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I know who you are."

“Okay,” says Chuck, “can we just go over it, one more time?  Please?”

“Everyone knows their parts,” says Dutch, with an edge of impatience.  “We’re ready to go!”

“If Nervous Nelly here doesn’t remember I say we go over it again,” says Texas, throwing an arm around Chuck in a misplaced display of support.  Chuck squawks and flails at the offending arm until Texas withdraws it.  

“You’re the one I’m most worried about!”

“Sure, dude.  Put it all on Big Texas.  He can carry it.”

“...Right,” says Chuck, giving up.  “Okay, from the top…”

\--

**** ** **

Accessing the bot control console is easier than the average person might expect, at least if you’ve watched Tooley enter the code before, which Julie has.  He takes a couple of seconds to think of every number, making it almost ludicrously easy to write down and save for later.  The tricky part will be covering her tracks when this is over, but Julie has a pretty good idea of how to manage it--she’ll just rig the alarms to go off once she’s well away from the panel.  Who set these bots to wreak havoc around Mister Kane’s new construction site?  Just one of those dastardly, unnamed Burners.  What a shame.

“Alright, guys,” she murmurs into her collar mic, “ready here.”

\--

****** **

On the opposite side of the city, next to the sleek little guardhouse of the underground prison, Chuck huddles as far as he can into the shadows, trying to breathe regularly.  “Okay, good.  Good to go.”

 _“Alright.  Good luck,”_ says Julie, and blinks offline.

The other three Burners poise themselves to leap into action at a moment’s notice, but the minute ticks on and slowly Chuck stops wringing his hands and Texas drops reluctantly out of his crane stance. The shadow of the guardhouse gets minutely longer as the afternoon ticks on toward evening.

“...Okay,” says Dutch after a long silence, “Did she do it or--”

And then the alarms go off, and Chuck whisper-screams _“Okay go go go!!”_ and dives for the keypad next to the guardhouse door.  Dutch and Texas keep watch as he hooks up one of his screens to it and starts typing, mouth moving silently as his fingers flicker over the keys.

“You can do this, dude!” says Texas, as quietly as he can.  “You already fixed up their cameras--”

Chuck makes high-pitched, distracted shushing noises and and Texas settles back in offended silence.  Dutch counts under his breath, and only twenty seconds later the keypad shines green.

 _“Okay,”_ whispers Chuck feverishly, as though the guards can hear them through the door. _“It’s--”_

“Ah?” says Texas, grinning expectantly.

Chuck makes a pained face.  “It’s…”

“Ah?”

“It’s Texas Time,” says Chuck, giving up.

\--

The Kane Co. elites inside the building hadn’t noticed that their security cam footage was looping; after all, there’s never much of a change in the Deluxe landscape one way or another.  One is in the corner playing cards with himself, while the other uses the private connection to message a friend.

“Hey,” says the one on KaneBook after a while, “you know how Reid gets fly duty every time?”

“...Mm?” says the card player, and then,  “Not every time.”

“Every time!  While we’re sittin’ here boring our butts off he’s up in a nice comfy pod, ‘watching the perimeter’.   _I_ used to get fly duty until he told--”

“You sure it’s not just a coincidence?”

“ _Until_ he told Commander Davidson I’d put my head down on the job for like _five_ seconds, and now I’m down here every day and Reid’s on fly du--”

“Hey, you hear that?”

Both elites turn to the door.  There’s a moment of silence.

“What?” says the one with the chat window open.

“I thought I heard someone say, like, ‘it’s--’”

**** ** **

One guard goes down almost instantly as one of Texas’s boots slams into his helmet.  The other one gets a little further, lunging towards the alarm console with one arm outstretched, but a knifehand catches him in the throat and throws him back into the desk.  He stays there, sprawled over the ruined card game and wheezing.  

The other Burners rush in after Texas and make short work of securing the elites with homemade energy cuffs and duct tape.  Outside, there’s the sound of a distant explosion, telling them Julie is still doing her job.  The boys glance at each other, reassured, and then Chuck grabs the access card from one’s belt and pulls it quickly through the scanner next to the guardhouse’s only other door.  The door slides open; beyond it, a flight of stairs leads down into the dark.

“Okay,” says Dutch, and steps into the lead, pulling up a screen.  “Let’s do this.”

****** **

There are no interior maps of the prison available on any of the servers.  This was a problem before the DPS was born.

Kanebots share a network of information-- _all_ their information, including navigation.  And although they get by on AI and obstacle perception programs when they have to venture into Motorcity, there are extra precautions when they move around Deluxe.  Specifically, sensors that look specifically for the alloys and polymers of Deluxe structures and create a “map” that keeps the bots from swerving into buildings or even people.

And R.O.T.H. still has his sensors.  Or he did a couple days ago, before Dutch, with the little bot’s apparent blessing, repurposed them for the Dutch Positioning System.

“ _In an underground prison, the high-security prisoners are going to be in the bottom levels,”_ Julie says, and Dutch nods, eyes fixed on his screens as the DPS sketches out a rough map.  “ _There’s--guys, look out behind you!”_

The Burners whip around--there’s nobody there.  Just the blank, white expanse of the corridor.  “What?!”  Chuck squeaks.  “Why?!”

“ _There’s a signal behind you on the map._ ”  

Dutch pulls up the screen again; there they are, a grinning “You Are Here” Dutch icon, and...right behind them, a single glowing energy signature.  

Chuck stares at the map, frozen, then cautiously reaches out a hand and sweeps it through the air around him--nothing.

“Maybe it’s messed up?”

“Shouldn’t be.”  Dutch frowns at the screen.  “Why’s it picking up on you?  Does it think you’re a bot or something?”

“There’s gotta be some kind of Kane tech it’s--” Chuck starts, and then stops, smacks his forehead and reaches down to fumble in his pocket.  “No, wait wait wait, I think I know what’s going on, gimme a sec.”

He pulls out the Kane Co. badge he stole from the security guard, turns it over in his fingers and then tosses it to Dutch. On the screen, the little glowing signal shifts marginally to sit squarely in the middle of Dutch’s icon.

“Hey, neat!” Dutch exclaims, and tosses the badge to Texas, who, instead of catching it, swats it hard onto the ground with a raucous kiai.

“Sure,” mumbles Chuck.  “You could also do that.”

“Texas only lets _three things_ hit him in the face--” Texas starts, but Dutch interrupts him--  “Later, man!  C’mon, let’s go find Mike.  I’ll let you guys know if I see any badge signals coming for us on the DPS.”

“So _handy_ ,” Chuck marvels, peering over Dutch’s shoulder with one hand pinning back his bangs.  “Does it pick up other bots too?”

“I think we’re about to find out,” says Dutch, stepping carefully through the open doorway with Texas on his heels.  Chuck scoops up the dropped badge and follows.  It’s not exactly dark beyond, but it’s not starkly bright in the usual Kane Co. way either.  There’s a sense of oppressive gloom from the flat white walls and windowless cell doors.

“How many people...are in here?” asks Chuck, his enthusiasm dissipating.  Dutch half-shrugs, glancing up from the DPS long enough to look at the doors.

“I dunno...looks like maybe ten to a side.”  

“And Julie said it was three levels…”

“Yeah.”

“So...sixty people?”

“Could be.”

“We should, uh…” Chuck fidgets.  “We should let them out, right?  I mean...it’s what Mike would do.”

Dutch and Chuck stare at each other for a minute, in mute commiseration over the absolute riskiness of introducing more people into this plan and possibly compromising any hope of secrecy.   _It’s what Mike would do._  

And then something explodes.  They both whip around--Chuck shrieks at the top of his lungs and activates his slingshot and Dutch pulls out his omnitool, but there’s no descending swarm of bots.  Just Texas, staggering back from a cell door.  Across the corridor from the opened door, there’s a sizzling burn-mark on the wall.  Shrapnel clatters on the ground around them.

“That ain’t no prisoner!”  Texas sounds affronted at the deception. “What the heck!”

Dutch pulls up the map again--the only signal is the stolen badge.  No bots, no soldiers.

“...Empty,” he says, and refreshes the map.  Nothing.  “There’s...nobody here.”

“Who keeps a _rocket-launcher_ behind a door like that?!”  Texas is still poking around the door he opened, occasionally stopping in his ranting to give the door a kick.  “Dumb-- _stupid_ \--spot--for a rocket-launcher!  Texas totally likes rockets, but--”

“Dutch…” Chuck says, very slowly.  “I, uh...I don’t think Kane wanted anybody getting to Mike.”

“Uh...yeah?”  Dutch frowns at him.  “Kinda figured that when he put him in prison.”

“No, I mean...no guards?  No bots?  Trapped doors?”

“...You think he booby-trapped this whole place?”

Texas breaks off his rant to snort.  “Heh.  Nice.”

“Come on, man.  Focus.”  Dutch sounds pained.  “What are you, like, twelve?”

“I’m focusing!”  Texas kicks the door one last time and then jogs back over.  “And I’m totally not twelve, and I’m focusing.  So what’re we talkin’ about over here, kids.”

“Booby--” Chuck starts, and Texas chortles again.  “-- _traps,_ ” Chuck finishes, going red now but soldiering on.  “There’s no guards and no bots on the DPS, and you just opened a door and it had a _rocket-launcher_ behind it?  Kane must’ve known we were going to come and try to get him.”

“So what?”  Texas flexes belligerently.  “He’s down on the bottom, right?  So we just don’t open any doors until we get there, and then anything that comes outta a door, we _punch it._  Kane’s sneaky, but he can’t out-sneak Texas’s _muscles._  Hwa-yah!”

There’s silence for a couple of seconds in the wake of this speech, and then Dutch sighs.  

“...He’s got a point,” he says.  “We came this far.  Leaving Mike here isn’t an option.”

“Of course it’s not!”  Chuck’s voice rises, high and tight and upset--he coughs painfully and forces it to a more reasonable octave.  “--But--just _listen_ to what you’re saying!  Okay?  ‘Oh yeah, it’s a trap.  Oh well, let’s keep walking and figure it out as we go’?!”

“Uh…” Texas nods silently for a second like he’s going through the sentence point by point.  “...yeah.”

“We’re not just gonna run in head-first,” Dutch says evenly.  “Man, you know that’s not what I’m sayin’.”

“I _know_ , but--”

“ _Whatever you’re doing,_ do it, _”_ Julie’s voice crackles through their comms.  “ _Blue is on the scene.  I’m setting off turrets farther and farther away from where you are, but somebody is closing down the terminals.  If they get the system locked down, I can’t do anything else to keep him off your backs.”_

“Okay!”  Chuck throws up his hands.  “Okay, okay, okay--”

“Okay?”  Texas grins.  “Awesome!  Let’s go already!”

It’s slow going after that.  At one point Texas jogs too far ahead of them and a laser grid singes the bill of his cap before he manages to backpedal away from it.  Dutch pinpoints the power cell and Chuck manages to thread a plasma bolt through the grid to hit it, but it takes him three shots and shaves precious minutes off their time.  And that’s only the first level; on the second, stepping on a panel in the floor opens a hatch that releases three mutant rats into the corridor.  The rats, apparently captured wild from Motorcity, are furious at being cooped up in a tiny box for god knows how long and charge straight at the Burners, snarling.  Chuck actually _climbs_ Texas while Dutch yells and kicks and stuns two of them with his omnitool.

“Keep your hair on, Chuck!” exclaims Texas, finally peeling Chuck off him and lunging forward to knife-hand the last rat in the neck.  “ _Jeez_.  Do you wanna be here or don’t you?  Are you a man or a--”

“Mouse?” Dutch finishes, looking shaken as he steps over the scabby, twitching bodies.  Texas squints at him.

“ _No_ , what?  No one’s a mouse.”

“No, I _don’t_ want to be here,” Chuck interjects, his face a terrible combination of blotchy red and ash white.  “We’re gonna find Mike and leave as fast as we can-- _we’re gonna find Mikey and leave as fast as we--_ aaaAAAAHHHH GUYS I CAN’T DO THIS!”

“ _Chuck!_ ” Dutch hisses, eyes wide.  “Dude, come on!”

“Yeah, come on!” says Texas, squeezing Chuck with one companionable arm.  “Look, I’ll even let you hang on me like you do on Tiny, alright?  It’s cool.  Texas is a man.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” squawks Chuck, but he doesn’t try to move out of Texas’ grip, nor does he dig his heels in when they start moving forward again, with Dutch edging along carefully in the lead.  

Dutch’s eyes are fixed on the floor for more trapped panels, which might be why he doesn’t notice the hair-thin laser crossing the corridor at shoulder-height just before the door to the third level.  He’s just pulling the door open as the panels on the wall start to slide up--there’s just enough time to look around at the needle-sharp spikes sliding out of the walls to either side before Texas comes barreling up behind him, _throws_ Chuck bodily through the door, and tackles Dutch through after him just in time to avoid gory and perforated death.

Everybody lies on the landing of the stairs for a couple of seconds after that, panting and staring up at the ceiling.  Finally Chuck says, very, very quietly, _“I think I just lost like ten years of my life._ ”

“Cool right?”  Texas pushes himself up and dusts off his jumpsuit while Chuck makes a kind of high, strangled whimpering noise and presses his hands over his eyes, shaking his head spasmodically.  “Come on.  Basement.  Let’s do this!”

The bottom level is just as blank as the others have been, full of windowless cell doors.  But the air seems heavier, thicker, charged with anticipation.  They proceed as carefully as before, but no floor tiles give way under them.  Nothing comes from the walls.  Nothing drops from the ceiling.

“So,” says Texas, “are we gonna open some doors or what?”

Dutch grimaces. “Doesn’t seem like a great idea.”

“Well, how else are we gonna find Mike?”  Texas glances at Chuck, raising one eyebrow.  “Can you guys do, like, that mind-meld thing?  You know, like, your brain can feel his brain or whatever.  Best friends.”

“What?” squeaks Chuck.  “No!  That’s not even--research has been inconclus--I mean, no!  We can’t do that!”

“You ever _tried_?”

“I--uh-- _you_ \--”

“Alright,” says Dutch suddenly, “Y’know what?  Never mind.  Let’s just--try a door.”

“Yeah, whoo!  Bring it on!”

Once the card goes through the scanner, Chuck ducks to one side of the door and Dutch pulls Texas away to the other, waiting for jets of fire or rockets or lasers, but there’s nothing.  The room seems harmlessly empty.

“Boo,” says Texas, folding his arms as the others edge cautiously out to look inside.

“C’mon, dude,” Dutch mutters, glancing back at him, “be happy it’s not more spi--”

“Can you guys hear something?” says Chuck suddenly, and all eyes turn inexorably back to the doorway.  There’s a faint, sinister hiss and wisps of white gas start to drift along the floor towards them.

“Close it!”  Dutch yanks his shirt up, covering his mouth and nose.  Chuck pulls his shirt up as well, swipes out at the panel on the door and then backs hastily away as the door slams shut again, trapping the gas inside.

“Do you think that’s airtight?” asks Chuck, his voice muffled by his shirt.

Dutch shrugs and uncovers his face, looking at the next door with grim determination.  “As long as we get out of here soon enough, it won’t matter.  Just keep looking for something that might tell us where Mike is.”

“I...yeah, right…” murmurs Chuck, and something in his tone makes Dutch look around, frowning.

“You alright?”

“I guess, it’s just…”

“Just what?”

“We haven’t run into any other traps down here.”

“So?” says Dutch easily, as though he can’t see where this is going.

“ _So_ , what if this is a trap?  Like--” he rushes along, before somebody can talk over him, “--we knew there were _traps,_ but--but what if-- _this._  Is a trap?  What if we were _supposed_ to make it this far?”

“That’s...a worst-case scenario,” Dutch says, as evenly as he can, ignoring the sinking in the pit of his stomach.  “It doesn’t matter, we’re already down here.  We gotta do what we came here to do.”

“Yeah,” says Texas, “it’s like--if Mike’s the cheese, then all we gotta do is get the cheese, and not die, and we ain’t died yet!”  He aims one gunchuck around the next corner and then jumps incautiously into the middle of the hallway beyond.

“So we _are_ mice now,” mutters Dutch.

“Uh, _no_ \--”

“Hey, Dutch?”

“What.”

Chuck’s staring at the DPS, and for the first time in a while Dutch looks down at it too.  In a room at the very end of the next hallway, there’s a room with a dot in it, exactly like the one identifying their Kane Co. badge.

 _“There’s someone in there,”_ Chuck whispers, staring down the long, dim hallway at the rows of doors.  The words, small and scared though they are, seem to echo in the heavy silence.

“Mike?”  Even Texas is talking softly, eyes narrowed, staring from door to door like he thinks Mike is about to jump out of one of them.

“Mike shouldn’t show up on the DPS, but--a Kane Co. guard would,” says Dutch, trying to keep his voice as his heart starts to pound.  “You wouldn’t put a guard down here in an empty room.  Come on.”

“Julie?”  Chuck’s voice trembles slightly as they start to walk.  “I think we found him.  What’s...what’s going on up there?”

“ _I’m on the last open terminal._ ”  Julie’s voice is tight and distracted.  “ _I lost eyes on Blue, but--_ shoot!”

“What?”  Chuck’s voice cracks, panicky.  “What?!”

“ _I’m locked out.  I’ve got no more distraction, guys, you’ve gotta get him and get out!_ ”

The door with the signal behind it is nondescript, blank and white just like all the other cell doors.  They stand there together staring at it for a second--not huddling in a group, not _scared,_ but a little bit closer than maybe they need to be.

“We’re on it,” says Chuck, and closes the call abruptly, watching the door like he expects it to attack any second. “Julie says she’s done, and she’s lost eyes on Blue.  Guys, we’ve got _no_ time left.”

“So...”  Texas glances back and forth at Dutch and Chuck.  “...Somebody gonna open it?”  

“I got it.”  Chuck reaches into his pocket and pulls out the badge; his hands are shaking so hard he almost fumbles it.  “...Here we go.”

He pulls up the keypad, swipes the stolen Kane Co. badge, and then ducks hastily to one side as the door _woosh_ es open.

There’s no booby trap, and no guard.  Dutch stares into the darkness of the room beyond, squinting--the only thing in there is what looks like a chair, in the center of the floor.  There’s a figure hunched in the chair; even in the dimness of the room, the faint silhouette of broad shoulders, lanky legs and a bowed head with unruly spikes at the crown is visible in the dark.

The sound of the door hissing open sounded deafeningly loud and sudden in the silence, but the figure doesn’t move as the Burners edge into the room.  Dutch resettles his grip on his omnitool, feeling a prickle of unease slide over his skin.  But...Mike was out of it, maybe he didn’t hear.

“ _Hey!  Tiny!_ ”  Texas stage-whispers.  Chuck winces at the sudden noise--Mike still doesn’t move.  “ _Get up!  I know you got punched ugly but beauty sleep_ totally _doesn’t work!  It’s, like, a lie girls tell, come on!”_

Nothing.  Chuck takes a shuddery breath, voice very small and scared in the silence, and tries, “... _Mikey_ …?”

Finally, the dark figure shifts.  A faint, almost inaudible noise echoes around the room--a formless noise that might be a groan.  Chuck edges away from the door and collapses his slingshot, glancing at the other Burners uncertainly.  With the green glow of his crosshairs gone, the room plunges into such deep shadow his face is a barely-distinguishable blur.

“ _I don’t like this,_ ” Dutch murmurs.  Texas lowers himself gently into a fighting stance, but Chuck shakes his head.

“It has to be him.”

“Chuck--”

“It’s _gotta be him,_ Dutch, let’s get him out--”

And then the figure in the chair sits slowly upright and a vivid flicker of bloody red light crawls up its arms, lights up a jagged, painted symbol on its chest.  The panic snaps up Dutch’s spine, abrupt and electric, before he even understands what he’s seeing.  “Out!” he yells, “--out out _out_ _now--_ ”

The door slams shut.  Chuck yelps and dives for it, already pulling up a screen--red lightning arcs from Red’s gloves, sears through the dim light and strikes the door console with an unpleasant crackling noise.  Chuck jerks away from the smoking, sparking console and throws a panicky glance between it and Red, breathing quick and shallow with terror.  Then he swallows hard, grits his teeth, and then pulls out his slingshot again.  

Texas lets out a furious whoop and throws himself forward, dancing around Red, throwing out jabs.  He blocks Red’s first three retaliatory blows--then Red feints to one side and lands two heavy punches and a knee in Texas’s diaphragm, sending Texas staggering back.

Dutch tries to duck past Texas to take a swing, but Red spins to one side, grabs his arm and twists into a shoulder throw that slams Dutch bodily against the floor and forces the air out of his lungs in a sharp, pained grunt.  “ _This is_ pointless _,_ ” Red growls, and lashes out again with one angular boot, landing a heavy kick in Dutch’s side as he tries to get up, wheezing.  “ _You know you can’t beat me.  Not without_ Mike _._ ”

“ _Yeah?_ ”  Dutch’s voice comes out strangled, winded, not nearly as loud as he means it to--Red doesn’t even seem to hear him.  Dutch reaches into his pocket, and feels his fingers close around cool metal.  “ _Let’s see how you like--_ this.”

The EMP is underwhelmingly silent, and for a split second of terror Dutch thinks it’s not going to work.  Then there’s a short, harsh _WHUMPF_ and all of the flashing red light dancing on the walls goes out like a snuffed candle.  Red staggers back, staring at his gloved hands, flexing his fingers in obvious frustration.  He barely looks up in time to see Texas rushing him with a flurry of jabs and roundhouse kicks, driving him back even as he blocks and counters.  Dutch sees a kick find its mark--then another one, and Texas may not be the best at fighting smart but when he lands a hit there’s no denying the impact and Red is off-balance and staggering.

The door opens.  Dutch whips around, expecting to see Chuck by the console, ready to run--but Chuck is backing _away_ from the door, slingshot raised, shaking all over.  Blue advances on him, fists raised but stride casual and unhurried, standing directly between the Burners and freedom.

“ _Hey Red,_ ” he says, and looks slowly around at the Burners, at Red with his fists still raised, at the wreckage of the room.  Red and Texas stare back, frozen mid-fight, Texas with one leg still raised for an axe kick.  Blue’s helmet distorts his voice even more than Red’s, garbled and mechanical, but even through the filters, he sounds amused.  “... _Still not done?_ ”

Red snarls and makes an obscene gesture.  “ _You can go_ f--”

“ _Whoa there._ ”  Blue raises his hands.  “ _There’s kids listening, y’know._ ”  And then as Red draws himself up, making a furious, snarling sound behind his mask, “-- _Care to do the honors?_ ”

Red’s fists work for a second, like he’d like nothing better than to ignore the Burners and go for Blue’s throat.  Then he stalks back to the seat they found him in, ignoring Texas’s soft, indignant hooting as he passes, and picks up four pairs of white, streamlined Kane Co. cuffs.

“ _Surrender, now,_ ” he says.  “ _Or_ hurt _later.”_

There’s a long, long moment of silence.  And then, very quietly, Dutch’s omnitool hits the floor and Chuck’s slingshot disassembles back into his arm with a soft _snik_ of sliding metal.  Texas stares around at his teammates, and then growls and pulls out his gunchucks, dropping them on the floor with a fierce scowl.

Red cuffs them while Blue stands on the other side of the room and talks into his comm-- “ _Mister Kane, we captured three of the Burners, what should…”_ almost too faint to hear, rough and discordant through his helmet.  Red’s not gentle about it--Texas, the first one cuffed, makes offended noises as Red twists Dutch’s arms painfully behind his back and elbows Chuck roughly against the wall to cuff him.

“ _Red._ ”  It’s Blue, striding over from across the room.  Chuck squeezes his eyes shut as Red makes a muffled, hateful noise of frustration and his grip tightens painfully.  “.. _._ Red!   _He wants to talk to you_.”

Red finally looks around and lets go--Chuck slumps down the wall, huddling up against Dutch’s side, sucking in air.  Red glances back down at them and pulls back a foot, threatening a kick.  Dutch glares at him, furiously refusing to flinch, Chuck winces back, and Texas growls, “ _Just try it, little man.”_  Red snorts and then turns and walks away in fast, angry strides, raising a hand to the side of his helmet.

“ _What do you want, Kane?_ ”

Blue stares after him for a long minute, and then shakes his head with a gravelly sigh and turns back to the Burners, dropping smoothly down to one knee in front of them.  His blank helmet turns from Texas to Dutch and then stops at Chuck.  Blue leans in, like he’s trying to get a better look at Chuck’s face--Chuck shrinks back, eyes wide, barely breathing.

And then, without warning, Blue’s hands clamp tight enough to bruise on Chuck’s upper arms, pulling him halfway off the ground until his face is within inches of that sleek white mask.  

“Let him go!” shouts Dutch as Chuck twists and screams in intermittent bursts, but Blue, entirely unfazed, doesn’t say a word.  Instead, from behind the mask there comes a faint humming, made toneless by the voice distortion filters.  Chuck looks about to faint at the sound, whatever it is.

“Hey!” Texas roars suddenly, turning every head towards him.  Red has dropped his hand away from his helmet at the sudden commotion and he’s coming back across the room in fast, angry strides. “If you’re gonna mess with anyone, it should be _me_ , alright?  It’s a big deal you caught me, just get the partyin’ over with!”

 _“Yeah, we’re both very happy to see you all,”_ says Red sarcastically, and plants a foot on Chuck’s chest to push him bodily back and away from Blue.  Chuck falls back, making high-pitched fear noises, and Dutch presses a shoulder to his, though his eyes are fixed on their captors.  Blue twists to look up at Red and then shakes his head and turns back, wordlessly unclipping a handful of white hoops from a strap at one hip.  Four collars, just like the ones Mike had been wearing when he called for help.  

Red’s hands clench into fists.  “ _What do you think you’re doing._ ”

Blue doesn’t even look at him.  With a flick of his wrist some invisible seam opens in the first collar, bending the circle wide open.  Chuck flinches back from Blue as he reaches out toward his neck with the collar, and Blue cocks his head to one side, apparently interested in Chuck’s response to his proximity.  He pauses, considering something; Chuck stares at him and hyperventilates.

“Hey!”  Texas says, loud and sudden, “--Whaddya think you’re doing?!  If you want to do any of your weird Kane stuff to Texas’s friends you gotta go through TEXAS!”

Blue pulls his hands back and turns to look at Texas.  Texas glowers belligerently back and flexes his neck-muscles once or twice.

“ _You’ll get yours,_ ” Red says.  “ _Sit back and shut up._ ”  But Blue’s shoulders give an uneven hitch and he lets out a ragged huff that might almost be a laugh.  He turns, sudden and sharp like a snake striking, grabs Texas by the throat, and snaps the white loop shut around his neck.

Dutch doesn’t struggle at being collared, but the looks he fixes Blue with could melt a hole through sheet iron.  Chuck just holds perfectly still like an animal in front of a predator, still sucking in deep, fast, panicky gasps of air, eyes screwed tight shut as the collar clicks shut on his throat.

“... _Well?_ ” Blue straightens up, turning away to look at Red.  “ _What did Mister Kane want?”_

 _“None of your business,”_ says Red, and crosses his arms sharply, shoulders tense.  

Blue sighs, head tilting slightly as though, inside his helmet, he’s rolling his eyes.  “ _Is this about the collars?_ ”  he says mildly.  “ _I’m sure Mister Kane had reasons to only brief me about it, y’know.”_

“ _I--don’t--_ care _what his reasons were!”_ Red snaps.  “ _And I don’t care about those stupid collars either.”_

Blue makes another staticky almost-laugh sound.  “... _Fine,_ ” he says.  “ _But you shouldn’t write off our tech like that.  Why did you power your suit down?”_

 _“These little rats had an EMP._ ”  Red aims a kick at Texas.  Texas, who still looks mutinous over his teammates’ surrender, goes “Hwa-cha!” and blocks him with a knee.  Red starts forward, already reaching out for a handful of Texas’s jumpsuit--and then stops dead as Blue thrusts out an arm, blocking his path.

 _“...Careful,_ ” Red says, and it’s almost frightening how abruptly quiet his voice is, soft and dangerous.  “ _What would_ Mister Kane _say if his new toy came back missing an_ arm?”

“ _Mister Kane is_ depending _on us_.”  Blue stands up, inches from Red’s visor, weight shifting onto the balls of his feet like he’s ready to make a move.  “ _This is a crucial mission, we have to follow his orders exactly.  And his orders are to bring them in,_ nothing else _._ ”

“Your orders are _let Texas out so he can kick your butts_!”  Texas interjects loudly.  Both soldiers ignore him.

“... _You aren’t even supposed to be here,”_ Red spits, and shoves Blue sharply away.  “ _Didn’t you have a job to do?  Somewhere_ far away from here _?”_

“ _Dealt with,_ ” says Blue casually, apparently unfazed by the hostility.  “ _They made a mess, but I took care of it.  And when I was done, I heard you weren’t done cleaning up so I came on over here.  Good thing too.  Looks like you’re a little bit too close to this one_.”

“ _I owe a couple of them some_ pain,” Red says bitterly.  “ _It doesn’t matter to me if we kill them or leave them alive, but it’s time for_ payback _.  I’ll leave them intact._ ”  He turns back to the Burners, and there’s a trace of what might be a smile in his voice, cruel and cold.  “... _Mostly._ ”

Dutch’s hands clench into fists--Chuck makes a very quiet, terrified noise.  Texas just glares, brows contracted fiercely, watching Blue move.  Probably trying to activate his latent superpowers again.  He never did completely let go of the idea that the only thing between him and awesome eye-lasers was focus and intensity.

“ _No,_ ” says Blue, and for the first time the easy-going humor is completely gone from his voice.  “ _We’ve got_ orders!   _Doesn’t that word mean anything to you?  Mister Kane--_ ”

“ _Screw_ Mister Kane _and his_ orders,” Red hisses.  Texas nods agreement, opening his mouth--Chuck makes a needle-sharp noise and elbows him, shaking his head rapidly.  

“ _He’s your_ commander,” says Blue, and he _definitely_ isn’t happy any more.  His voice is rising, his shoulders are going tense.  His voice gets unsteadier as he gets more upset--fast fragments of sentences, like he’s struggling to the words out.  “ _I’m not--letting you near them--without new orders!_ ”

Red makes a derisive noise and turns, stalking toward the door again--Blue follows him, still talking, but Red doesn’t stop until Blue reaches out and grabs his shoulder, pulling him around; they sink into a hissed argument by the entrance, leaning in to growl in each other’s faces.  Dutch watches them, waiting to see if they’re coming back, but after a solid ten seconds the fight shows no sign of winding down.  He takes a calming breath, and then lowers his voice to a whisper.  “... _Julie?  Kinda need a hand here._ ”

\--

Julie’s running.  Running to where her friends are, unwilling to summon her pod and fly it there--too noticeable, and her other ride would be a thousand times worse.  Julie has nightmares where she’s caught driving Nine Lives through Deluxe.

“ _Working on it,_ ” she hisses, out of breath, and ducks into a doorway as a phalanx of patrolling bots whirrs by overhead.  “ _Gimme a second!_ ”

 _Come on, come on,_ think.  There’s a way to get them out of there, there has to be, but getting into the prison system’s controls would take way too long for an outsider, and it’s not as though she can just _ask_ a Kane Co. cadet to access--

Julie stops cold, chest heaving, staring at nothing.  Then she ducks under a bridge, opens a screen, and pulls up some data she does have access to: the contact information of all Kane Co. employees.

 _“Let this work,”_ she breathes, and presses a fingertip to a name and number under the G section of the cadets category.

\--

The call goes through to Dutch with a heart-stoppingly sudden, cheerful chiming noise.  The Burners all jump, immediately staring over at Red and Blue--they’re still arguing.  Dutch takes a deep breath and picks up the call on sound only, a voice in his ear.

_“Hey Dutch...heard you got into a situation.”_

Dutch slumps back against the wall with a heavy sigh of relief.  Chuck and Texas both glance at him--he sits up straight, playing the anxious captive again.  “ _It’s Dar,_ ” he breathes, barely moving his mouth, eyes still fixed on Red and Blue. “ _My brother, he’s got access codes for the doors._ ”

“ _Can he get the cuffs?”_  Chuck seems to be making a concentrated effort to keep his voice steady.  It’s not working very well.  “ _If he can take down the first layer of firewall with Kane Co. access I have a skeleton key--I mean, doing it upside-down behind my back is going to take a while but--_ ”

Across the room, voices rise.  The Burners freeze for a second as Red shoves Blue away from him, snarling something about “-- _loyalty--”_ and “ _gullible_ idiots _like you!!”_  Under the cover of his outburst, Dutch whispers to his brother, barely audible, then elbows Chuck and nods.

Chuck twists his hands awkwardly in the unforgiving cuffs, hissing through his teeth as they bite into his wrists, and then gives a fervent sigh as the cuffs chime softly and a holoscreen shimmers into existence under his hands.  Without a word Texas and Dutch edge closer, hiding the green glow of the screen behind his back.  For a couple long minutes there isn’t a sound in the cell except for the argument that’s still going on across the room and occasionally a soft, pained hiss from Chuck as his fingers slip behind his back and he loses his progress.

And then-- _too soon too_ soon--Red turns his back on Blue and marches back toward the Burners.  Blue follows at a slower pace, arms crossed, shaking his head slowly as Red stomps up to their prisoners.

“ _Get up,_ ” Red snaps, shoulders tense with leftover rage.  “ _Don’t get too excited.  If I’m lucky I’ll be the one in charge of_ interrogating _you.”_

He grabs Dutch by the arm and yanks him upright, dragging him towards the door.  Dutch glances back--at Blue, reaching for Chuck and Texas, and then up at Red--and then lets out a sudden pained yell and throws himself deliberately forward.  Red snarls, snatching for Dutch’s shoulder again, but he misses and the sound of Dutch’s body hitting the floor echoes dully across the room.

“ _Get up_!”

“Yeah--okay, _ow--_ s-sure.”  Dutch gets up, grimacing with exaggerated agony, and then staggers and keels dramatically over again. “Agh!”

Blue turns, distracted from Chuck and Texas, and straightens up abruptly and walks over to stand firmly between Red and Dutch.  Red steps forward, apparently intending to shove past him, but Blue holds his ground.  Red comes to a stop inches from him, close enough for their visors to touch.

“ _...Move,_ ” Red snarls, very quietly.

“ _What do you think you’re doing?_ ”

“ _I didn’t--”_

 _“_ I saw you hit him!”  Chuck blurts out, and flinches back as both of them turn to look at him.  Behind his back his hands shake, hovering over the keyboard.  “I-I saw it, you just don’t want him to know you’re disobeying your orders!”

Red is stock-still for a second, as if behind the mask he’s gaping in furious disbelief--then he’s moving, leaving Dutch on the ground, already pulling back a fist as his voice rises, “-- _You filthy little_ liar--!”

Blue grabs Red’s shoulder, hauls him around and hits him hard in the gut with a shining blue shockwave.  Red’s suit lights up briefly blue as he falls back, and then crackles to life with his own red energy.  Texas, with his usual sense of the worst possible timing, cheers.  Dutch scrambles away as Red and Blue spin past him, gauntlets locked, helmet to helmet.  Chuck gnaws on his lower lip, trying desperately to focus with Texas whooping inches from his ear.  Dutch army-crawls closer to the other Burners, gasping,  “ _Please tell me you got it!”_

“Almost!”  Chuck’s voice cracks but his hands are moving faster now, his eyes squeezed shut.  “-- _almost--_ ”

There’s a soft _click_ , and their cuffs shiver and then fall neatly into halves.  Chuck gasps in a huge breath and lets it out in a shaky, disbelieving peal of laughter.  Dutch pulls him up to his feet and hisses into his comm, “ _Now Dar_ now!”

The door beeps and whirs open.  Neither Red nor Blue seems to notice; Red has Blue backed up against a wall, struggling to pin him as Blue lashes out with fists and elbows at his armored torso.  Texas is still watching the fight, apparently deeply focused, and Dutch has to grab him and pull to get him moving.  

“Not yet not yet--” he digs in his heels and yanks his arm away.  “--Wait up!  HEY YOU IN THE HELMET, GUESS WHAT!”

“ _What_?!”  Red whips around, fists rising, just in time for Texas to roar “IIIIIIT’S TEXAAAASSS TIIIIIIIIME!!!” and sink a fist into his stomach so hard his feet leave the ground.  Red goes flying back--Blue jerks, staring around as Red abruptly vanishes from his field of vision, and then brings his arms up to defend himself just in time to avoid a plasma bolt right in the helmet.  The blast knocks him back and Chuck laughs incredulously, then squawks as Dutch grabs the back of his shirt and yanks him toward the door.

And then they’re running flat-out, Chuck screaming wildly, Dutch with teeth grimly bared, Texas thudding behind.

 _“Oh god oh god which way which way?”_ Chuck babbles, skidding to a horrified, jigging halt at a T-bone “Which way did we come fr--”

“ _Map!”_ roars Texas, still bringing up the rear.  “Dutch, _map_!”

“On it!” says Dutch, mashing buttons on the DPS.  It only takes seconds to initialize, but it feels like decades.

 _“Rightrightrightright_!!” Chuck squeaks as soon as the map pops up, grabbing at Dutch’s sleeve and then taking off running toward the distant door.

“And then up the stairs, yeah!” says Dutch, following him.  “Come on, Tex, we’re _not gonna fight ‘em!!_  You got your punch in!”

Texas grimaces, hops on the balls of his feet, and turns his back on the way they came with a growl of frustration.   _“Fine!”_

They’re halfway down the hall when the cool white lights turn red and blocky red warning icons pop up all down its length.

“Not good, not good,” Dutch mutters.  “ _Dar!_ What’s goin’ on?  Do we have time to get--”

Chuck cuts him off with a shriek, skidding to a stop again with one shaking finger extended ahead of him.  Spikes, like the ones that almost took them out on the second floor, have shot out of the walls in front of the door, closing off the road.  Dutch spits out a curse and backpedals, but there’s nowhere left to run.  

Red and Blue are advancing on them, faceless shadows limned in neon waves of blue and crackling-red arcs of lightning.  Red’s gloves are throwing off hair-thin, angular streams of power that ground in the walls around him, and as he walks toward them the lights behind him flicker and die one by one.

“ROTH!”  Dutch’s voice cracks as he shouts into his comm--Chuck and Texas press in close on either side of him, backing toward the blocked exit.  “We need a pickup!”

“What’s ROTH gonna do?!”  Chuck fires off a shot--one of Red’s gloved hands makes a streak of eye-burning red light in the air and he swats the plasma bolt out of the air without breaking his stride.  “Oh my god oh god oh god oh god--”

“Hey guys,” mutters Dutch, digging frantically in his satchel, “did you know--there’s only about two feet of floor between us and the underside of Deluxe right now?”

“NOT HELPING!” screams Chuck, and then whimpers as Red dodges another shot and raises his fists, cracking his knuckles, walking faster.  “ _Guys, do something, this is just making him angrier!”_

Texas snarls and aims one gunchuck at each supersoldier.  “Who cares?!  Bring it on!  Dutch, get your rear in gear, Texas might need backup!”

“Get _down!_ ” shouts Dutch, and lobs something neon-purple at their oncoming attackers.

Red pauses, staring down at the Selenium Sulfate as it starts to hiss angrily, glowing volatile fuschia.  And then Blue is grabbing him by the collar, dragging him back and throwing both of them to safety as the Selenium goes off with a deafening _BOOM_.

Cold, damp air rushes into the corridor as everything trembles and shudders.  Sounds are reduced to faint, tinny sensations, sights to thick smoke and green after-images.  Chuck staggers back, letting out a horrified stream of high-pitched, broken noises, as far as possible from the gaping hole blown in the prison floor and the dizzyingly distant expanse of Motorcity stretched out below them.  When Dutch grabs his arm and tries to pull him forward, he digs his heels in and resists with surprising strength.

“ _ARE YOU_ CRAZY?!”

“We gotta jump!”

“ _Get off me,_ ” Red is snarling on the other side of the hole, shoving at Blue, struggling to get upright.  “Get off!   _I didn’t ask you for that, don’t_ ever _touch me--”_

“We--will--DIE!”

“Trust me!”

Chuck opens his mouth, starting to shake his head again, and then hesitates, frozen in place, eyes wide and cheeks bloodless.

“Come on ladies!”  Texas wraps an arm around each of their waists and Chuck yelps as his feet abruptly leave the ground.  “LAST ONE TO THE GROUND IS A LOSER!   _TEXAAAAAAAAAAAAS!!!”_

For a few endless seconds, they’re falling.  Chuck thrashes in terror, reaching out like he could possibly catch himself as the hole in Motorcity’s ceiling shrinks away from them and the darkness swallows it.  Dutch tries to grab one of Chuck’s flailing arms, struggling to see through the the eye-stinging, dizzying rush of wind and darkness--Texas yells something and then the sturdy arm around Dutch’s waist slips and then loses hold, leaving him tumbling through the rushing emptiness.  There’s nothing solid or still, nothing to focus on; just the sound of Chuck screaming and Texas laughing like a madman, laughing cracked and too hard at nothing.  

Far, far below, in flashes as he struggles to right himself, Dutch sees lines and specks of neon light; Motorcity is laid out beneath them like a map.   _Wow,_ he finds himself thinking, through a haze of visceral terror for his life. _This would make a great painting._

Then something wraps around his stomach, and he’s not falling any more. Distantly, he registers the sudden quiet where there used to be a kind of high-pitched, familiar keening noise--Chuck has either been caught as well or has passed out from sheer terror, or possibly both.  Texas is yelling _kiai_ like the distant ground is something he can punch into submission before he smashes into it--then he goes _uhff_ and Dutch knows he’s safe too.  ROTH lets out a triumphant squeak and slowly levels out to a leisurely glide, carrying all three of them with apparent ease.

“Buddy, what would we do without you?”  Dutch says, and his voice comes out cracked and trembling.  ROTH chirrups and pulls the three Burners closer, starting a careful, gradual descent towards the nearest rooftop.  

They land impossibly softly, and the feeling of cool, tarry shingles is so reassuring that Dutch just lets himself collapse bodily onto the roof, relief pouring through him like air into his lungs, making every light around them seem brighter.  He pats one of ROTH’s arms with a limp hand, murmuring, “Good job.”

And then Texas flings himself against ROTH with a hug that would probably have broken a bone or two if ROTH had any, yelling tearfully about what a choice dude his robot bro is, and Dutch has to sit up to avoid being stepped on.  Moving shakes off some of the weird, surreal numbness, but not all of it.  Even just sitting still, Dutch is weirdly aware of his whole body and how clear everything looks as he looks around the empty rooftop.

Next to him, Chuck is lying with his knees hugged tightly to his chest, one eye peering blankly through his bangs at the Motorcity sky.  His breathing is even but shallow.

“Hey,” says Dutch, putting a hand on Chuck’s shoulder, “we did it, man.”

Chuck shakes his head slowly, and when he swallows Dutch’s eyes move inexorably to the white collar around his neck.   _Oh, right.  Those._

“We didn’t…”

“We _made_ it,” says Dutch firmly, because if there’s a bright side it’s definitely that they broke into a booby-trapped top-security Kane Co. prison, ran into Blue _and_ Red, dropped from miles above Motorcity, and still survived somehow.

“We didn’t get Mike.”

_Oh, right.  That._

“And--we’ve still got _these_ things on us,” mumbles Chuck, touching the collar gingerly.  Dutch realizes ROTH’s indignant whirring has settled into a calm whine, and glances over his shoulder.  Texas has stopped crying on the bot to examine his own collar, trying ineffectually to loosen it.  

“ _Guys?_ ” Julie’s voice is very flat and calm, but very tense.  For a long second nobody moves to answer their comms.  “Guys!”

“...Present,” says Dutch, because nobody else is volunteering to talk.  “What’s goin’ on up there?”

“ _I don’t know._ ”  Julie sighs, a rush of static.  “Yet, _I don’t know...yet.  Everything’s still locked down though, and I don’t see any sign of bots following you._ ”

“We gotta get off this roof and back to the hideout,” says Dutch grimly, standing up.  “We can figure out what these are when we get there.”

“ _Figure out what_ what _are?”_

“That Blue jerk put a collar on Texas’s totally jacked neck!”  Texas still sounds too loud in the aftermath of the fall, pacing and jittering and occasionally throwing punches at the air like the adrenaline is burning him up inside.  “Texas isn’t into that!”

“ _Collars?_ ”  Julie sounds worried.  “ _On all of you?_ ”

“Yeah.”  Dutch swallows, all too aware of the foreign constriction on his throat.  “Got any idea what…?”

“ _I haven’t heard anything about ‘collars’._ ”  Julie is silent for a second, then there’s a click like she’s snapping her fingers.  “--Wait!   _But--Mike was wearing something around his neck, right?  When he called us, he had a...like, a white collar around his throat, with a red light._ ”

“Sounds about right.”  Dutch glances at Chuck--the collar’s light blinks at him in the dark.  “So?”

“ _So…_ ”  A frustrated sigh.  “... _I don’t know.  It’s something, at least.”_

“What if they _explode?_ ”  Texas is still trying to pry his fingers under his collar, with no success.  “-- _BOOM!_  No more Burners!”

Chuck makes a wheezy noise and hugs his legs to his chest, burying his face in his knees.  The red light on the side of his collar is flashing urgently, speeding up in time with his frantic heartbeat..  

 _“Texas, quit it,”_ says Julie’s icon firmly.   _“If Kane wanted to use those collars to kill you guys--if that’s what they even_ do-- _wouldn’t he have done it already?  I don’t know, guys, I’ll have to look around in whatever R &D files I can get to see if I can find anything about collars.  But if they’re classified I don’t know if I’ll be able to even get in.”_

“Hey, Julie,” says Dutch slowly, “if these are bugged--”

 _“Then--”_  Julie pauses, but continues with determination, _“Then whoever’s listening already knows enough, and there’s no reason not to keep helping you.  But if they’re prison tech, I think there’s a good chance they’re not bugged.  I’ll dig around, guys.  Chuck, can you--Chuck?”_

“ _Unghghhhkkk_ ,” says Chuck.  Julie’s icon glances at Dutch and Texas, then back down.  

“Should we…?”

“Think this usually happens when he’s in Mutt, so Mike handles it,” Dutch volunteers.  “I don’t know, man.  Uh...Chuck--?”

“Okay that’s enough freaking out,” Texas says firmly, and claps Chuck firmly on the back.  Chuck lets out a noise like a muffled shriek and rockets onto his feet in a mess of flailing limbs.  Texas grins.  “Yeah!  Hey, you heard Stacy, we’re totally not gonna die!”

“No!”  Chuck’s voice is cracked and piercing with hysteria--Dutch winces and opens his mouth to say something but Chuck isn’t listening.  “No, she said we _probably_ wouldn’t die _maybe_ we _guess!!_  We’re wearing _Kane Co collars_ , do you even get that?! They could be poisoning us!  They could be taking over our brains!  They could be bombs!  They could just be trackers that lead bots to us wherever we go and _I DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE AND I CAN’T GET IT OFF_!!”

There’s a moment of ringing silence.  

“... _I’m coming down,_ ” says Julie finally.  “ _I’ll pick you guys up, okay?  We can talk about what to do next once we’re back._ ”

“Sure,” says Dutch, and drags a hand slowly down his face, feeling his head start to throb as the adrenaline slowly ebbs away.  “...Okay.  See you in fifteen.”

It’s more like twenty, but when Nine Lives roars up she’s towing Stronghorn and Whiptail behind her.  Chuck stares hopelessly around as Texas and Dutch head to their respective cars, then sighs and wanders to Nine Lives and slides silently into Julie’s passenger seat.  The buckle clicks, loud in the silence, and he lies back against the seat with his knees up and his eyes closed.

The drive in without talking even though all their comms are still up and running, no faster than 200 miles per hour at any time.  Texas doesn’t even take any of the jumps on the highway, and once or twice Julie thinks she hears the sound of a yawn through her speakers.

Chuck yawns sometimes too, but only in between stretches of shallow little breaths and the occasional crescendo of muffled half-sobs that eventually settle into silence again.  Julie’s sure he wouldn’t let anyone hear if he had the choice, so she keeps her eyes on the road and pretends not to notice.

Jacob’s there when they get to the hideout, sitting on the edge of the concrete platform above their parking spots.  When they pull up, he straightens and stands, looking eagerly between the cars.  It takes everything Julie has to be the first to get out, and when everyone else emerges with no sign of Mike, the look on Jacob’s face makes her want to climb right back into Nine Lives and drive up to Deluxe and never come back to Motorcity again.

It’s not an option, of course.

ROTH whirrs up to Jacob and puts both hands on his shoulders--his eye is dim, his whole boxy chassis seems to droop a little, like he’s too sad to stay in the air.  Jacob leans into ROTH’s hold for a second, and then pushes himself up without a word, turns and walks slowly back into the hideout.  Julie opens her mouth to call out after him, but...there’s nothing to say.

Dutch is the one who motions them all towards the garage, where a half-repaired Mutt is resting in his workshop.  She’s smooth and whole again, but without the lime-green paint job she doesn’t quite look like herself.  

None of them says anything.  None of them really need to.  Chuck manages to climb into the passenger seat and cinches the harness over his chest with shaking hands.  As quietly as possible, Julie shuts the door while Dutch hops into the driver’s seat.  “Don’t worry, I won’t drive,” he says to everyone and no one, turning the key in the ignition.  It’s not the same, not at all, without Mike in the driver’s seat, but hearing the sound of Mutt’s motor woofing to life isn’t just a comfort to Chuck.  Even Texas relaxes and leans against the chassis with a loud sniff.

“... _Mike would know what to do,_ ” Chuck says quietly.

There’s a long silence, and then Dutch clears his throat and swipes a hand at his eyes.  “...No,” he says.  “He wouldn’t.  But he’d tell us we’re gonna be okay anyway.  Y’know?  He’d help us stick together until we fix it.”

“Yeah,” says Julie quietly.  She glances at Texas, who meets her eyes defiantly for about half a second before looking sharply away and pulling his hat down abruptly over his eyes, shoulders hunched.  Julie’s eyes zone in on the white band around his neck, and she purses her lips.   _Stick together until we fix it._

“How do we fix it?” she says aloud, slowly.

“Huh?” says Dutch, looking away from Chuck, one hand resting on Chuck’s faintly-shuddering back.

“What’s step one?”

“Is this really a good time--”

“It’s not a _bad_ one,” says Julie stubbornly.  “I know we’re all still freaked out--”

“You weren’t _there_ ,” says Chuck miserably, and Julie grits her teeth, trying to fight down the surge of anger and worry in her gut.

“Yeah, because it was such a treat thinking Kane had caught you guys _too_!  I just _loved_ that!”

“We _fell_ from the _ceiling_!” shouts Chuck, and then, to everyone’s shock, starts to laugh.  “Ha--we--we _fell_ off Deluxe!”

For a second he’s the only one laughing, hoarse and a little bit too hard--then Texas snorts, bent shoulders shaking, and starts to laugh too.  

“Imagine Kane’s _face,_ ” Dutch says quietly, and the corner of his mouth twitches as Chuck and Texas laugh even harder.  “You think he’ll know we made it?”

“He’ll assume,” Julie says, and everything is still awful but there’s something contagious about that broken, exhausted laughter.  “ _If you didn’t destroy them with your own two hands, they’re still alive!!  Like cockroaches!!_ ”  

It’s really not that funny, but everybody laughs at it anyway.  When Chuck sweeps back his bangs, he’s still pale and red-eyed, but there’s also life there again--a kind of present awareness that’s been missing since they landed on the roof.  He unbuckles himself slowly, climbs out of the seat, and stretches, groaning before dropping back into his usual nervous hunch.

“Welcome back,” says Dutch, patting his back, and Chuck grins weakly.  Then he looks at Julie, still kind of smiling, and says, “Okay...what’re you thinking?”

“I’m thinking we need to find out what these collars do,” says Julie, and Texas looks around, one hand going to his neck.

“What?  Why not just--break ‘em off?  Texas would do it himself but these powerful man-fingers are just too--”

“Actually,” says Dutch, “I have an idea about that.  When I left Deluxe, I took some stuff down with me.”  He nods at ROTH, who salutes and motors away at speed into the storage closet.  “Maybe Deluxe tools can get into Deluxe tech.”

“Maybe.”  Julie turns to Texas.  “Texas, you’ve gotta be our test subject.”

“Nuh-uh.”  Texas glowers.  “You do it.”

“I would,” says Julie patiently, “but like everybody’s been _so good_ about reminding me, _I don’t have a collar._  And we need Chuck to get a look at what’s going on too.”

“Yeah!”  Chuck looks infinitely relieved to have the excuse.  His hand is on his neck again, tugging and scratching at the collar like he doesn’t notice he’s doing it.  “If there’s some kind of interface, maybe I can get in there.”

ROTH hands Dutch a white roll; Dutch spreads it out on the table in front of him, running his fingers over tiny, sharp, streamlined tools.  “There’s probably not gonna be a way to just pry it open,” he says, and pulls out something thin and flat.  “--but maybe I can get into the power cells.”

Texas stares around at the other Burners, apparently trying to marshall an argument, and then growls and rolls his neck, popping his spine.  “Yeah, _okay_ already,” he says, a little bit grumpily.  “But if you stab Texas, Texas is gonna _HAI!  HWAH!  YA-CHAAAH!_ ”  A series of expressive hand gestures, apparently pantomiming a signature Texas Beatdown.

“Yeah yeah yeah.”  Dutch waves him off.  “Sit down and hold still, or I _am_ gonna stab you and it’s gonna be your fault.”

Everybody sits around and stares for the first couple of minutes, but Dutch just pokes cautiously at almost-invisible seams and lines on the collar, occasionally putting down one tool or picking up another one, and after a solid four or five minutes of nothing, even Texas’s twitchy tension has ebbed.  Julie leans back in her seat and starts to yawn, and then promptly chokes as Texas jumps and yells “ _Ow!_ ”

“ _Agh_ , geez!”  Dutch pulls his hands away at the same moment, drops the tool he was holding and sticks his fingers in his mouth.  Chuck, who was apparently dozing off sitting up, jerks upright at the commotion, staring around.

“Wh--?  What happened?!”

“Dude!” Texas rubs at his neck and then scowls at Dutch.  “You stabbed me!  I told you _not to stab me!  HAI!  HW--_ ”

“No I didn’t!”  Dutch shakes his fingers, hissing.  “It _shocked_ me!”

“Shocked...both of you.”  Chuck leans in, poking cautiously at the place Dutch was trying to open up; nothing.  “You probably stuck something right in the power cell, dude, you’re lucky you didn’t get a bigger shock than you did.”  he sits back and rubs his eyes roughly, slowly shaking his head.  “...I...you know I wanna get them off, but we gotta figure out more about these things before we go poking around.”

“He’s right.”  Julie presses her knuckles into her temples for a few seconds, feeling about a million years old.  God, it’s been such a long day..  “We can’t risk anything.

“So, what, we just stop looking for answers?” Dutch’s hand is hovering over the roll of tools--Texas pulls his shoulders up rebelliously, eyeing Dutch suspiciously.  “You’re the one who wanted to check ‘em out!”

“I know, I know, but if they... _do_ something...messing with them blind could just set them off.  Your necks are on the line here.”  She smiles wanly.  “...Literally.”

“Not Texas’s powerful neck,” Texas says, horrified.

“And everybody else’s.”  Julie falls back in her chair, staring up at the ceiling.  “We’re not _getting_ anywhere like this.  There has to be something else we can try.”

“Like what?”  Chuck says, just a touch bitterly, and digs his fingers at his collar for the hundredth time since they got back to the hideout.  The skin of his neck around the collar is red and scratched.  “I’m seriously open to suggestions here.”  

Julie sits up abruptly.  The other Burners all look up too, expectant, but Julie isn’t looking at them.  A message has popped up on her comm screen, flashing angry red.   _URGENT TOP-LEVEL SUMMONS_.  Her dad wants her in his office, _now_.

“Julie?”

“I have to go to Deluxe,” says Julie, and jumps off her stool.  “Right now.”

“But--Julie!”

“I’m sorry, I’ve gotta go!”  Julie backs away, already pulling her keys out of her pocket.  “I’ll look around while I’m up there, okay?  Sorry!”

\--

The first thing she notices when she slips through the door is the yelling.  

Red and Blue are standing on either side of the meeting table, but they’re leaned so far toward each other their helmets are almost touching.  Red is favoring one leg, Blue’s helmet visor is a spiderweb of cracks and the blue material of his left sleeve is singed.  

“ _\--orders orders orders!  If you’d kept your mouth shut and got out of my way--”_

 _“They were subdued, if you’d followed orders and taken them in immediately they would be in custody!_ ”  Blue has never sounded this angry--his gloves are glowing with pulsing waves of blue light, like he’s itching to blow Red away with a shockwave.  “ _And if I hadn’t been there,_ you _would be dead!  That explosion blew right through the Deluxe floor, your armor wouldn’t have protected you!_ ”

“ _Ask me whether or not I give a_ fu-- _”_

 _“Hey,_ watch your mouth!”

Julie edges in, eyes wide--if either of them notice her, they don’t acknowledge her presence.  There’s no sign of her dad.

“ _Mister Kane told us--”_

_“I.  Don’t. CARE!”_

_“I do,”_ says Blue, his voice levelling out in the echoes of Red’s enraged scream.   _“And you should try to, if you want--”_

 _“I don’t want_ anything _from him!”_

 _“You--”_ Blue seems taken aback, dumbfounded.  He shakes his head once, twice, like an animal trying to dislodge a fly.  Red chuckles entirely humorlessly, but before he can voice his impending mockery Kane’s holographic avatar flickers into life at the head of the table.

“Out,” says Kane.  Blue salutes, knife-sharp, and says, _“Yes sir!”_ while Red grunts and whips around with bad grace.  “Not you, commander.  Attention and wait for further orders.  I’m not done with you yet.”

Julie remembers the second video of Mike that they found, that snide voice saying _“Our friend in the helmet hit you pretty hard that last time”_ , and that’s one reason why she intentionally slams shoulders with Red as he walks past her.  He jerks for a second like he wants to hit her back, but she gives him a hard look, trying to put all the power into it that her father ever has.  He stands and holds the look for a minute, shoulders heaving angrily, fists clenched, and then growls and spins on his heel, stomping out the door and vanishing out into the hallway beyond.  Julie glares after him, and then smooths her expression into something like innocently-confused annoyance and turns back to walk into the belly of the beast.  This could be her only opportunity to hear a hint straight from the source about the collars, the mission, where Mike actually is--

But her dad doesn’t debrief Blue about the mission--doesn’t even address him.  His hologram settles down at the table, as though there’s no urgent business to attend to, folds its hands on the table and says “...Well?  Have a seat, Julie.  We don’t have all day.”

The lesson is pretty short today; her dad is in a good mood, and Julie knows _exactly_ why.  Whatever those collars do, he wanted them on her friends’ necks.  They walked right into his trap.  Julie watches him smile, the sweeping openness that always creeps into his gestures when he’s pleased, and feels the familiar ache of hate and love and disappointment churning in her chest.

And the whole time, Blue stands at her shoulder.  He’s silent and still but just... _present._  The soft, staticky sound of his breathing would almost be comforting if Julie wasn’t so on edge.  She turns the pen she’s supposed to be using for notes over and over in her hands, and wonders if there’s anywhere she could stab with it that would put Blue out of commission without…

Well.  She can imagine Mike’s face if he ever found out she did something...fatal.  Just that is enough to make her put the pen down and force herself to focus on her father’s voice, steadfastly ignoring the feeling of somebody standing silent at her shoulder.  But she’s still not 100%, and she thinks her dad notices because there’s a hint of disappointment in his voice when his hologram stands up and says “... _That’s it for today_.”  

“Thanks, Dad,” Julie says, a beat too late and a shade too distant, and Kane gives her a silent, considering look and then nods.  

“Shut the door behind you.Commander, you’ll stay and debrief.”

She’s dismissed.  For a second, Julie almost stays and insists that she should be present for a debriefing, should learn how her dad handles elite missions.  But he’s watching her, waiting for her to go so her can start, and she knows him well enough not to push her luck when he’s not interested in talking.  She pushes herself up, turns to the door and leaves quietly, head down.  Behind her as the door closes, she hears her father’s voice, “ _\--So, even when the Burners are_ handed _to you on a_ silver platter _\--”_ and then the door is closed and his voice is snuffed out.  

Julie frowns to herself--her dad was definitely happy about how the mission turned out.  He must have been _looking_ for reasons to yell, and Julie has a suspicion she knows the reason behind his sudden change of mood.  For a second, a bitter pang of guilt throbs in her stomach.  Super-soldier or not, Harley was...nice.  At least, to her.  He didn’t know he was putting himself on Kane’s list when Julie asked if he’d like to go out some time.  And her dad should know that isn’t his fault, and her dad shouldn’t think it’s _anybody’s_ “fault”, dammit--  

Julie’s so distracted with bitter thoughts and imaginary arguments, she doesn’t notice the shadow leaning in the doorway of a darkened room until Red steps out in front of her.  This time she has room to jump backwards instead of trying to punch him in the throat again; he holds up his hands in mocking surrender.

“ _You’re jumpy for an intern,_ ” he says.  Julie forces herself not to scowl, instead forcing her face to recover its perfect, polite Miss Deluxe mask.

“You’re just _so_ scary,” she says.  “Mister Kane shouldn’t keep you around!” And then, a touch vindictively, “...Ew, and you _stink_.”  

He does, too--the sharp, nose-stinging smell of Selenium Sulfate smoke--but Red ignores that part and her pointed step away from him, leaning in closer.  

 _“_ I’m _scary?  I don’t buy it--what about his precious_ Commander _?  You don’t mind having him breathing over your shoulder every second of the day?”_

“Oh, but he’s so _cute_ and polite,” says Julie ruthlessly.  Red shudders, and Julie can almost feel the sneer right through the tinted glass of his visor.  “He’s always looking out for me and calling me _Miss Julie,_ he’s sweet!”

“ _He’s a pathetic waste of space._ ”

“Oh, stop.”

Red strangles the air.  “ _I_ know _you’re pretending._ Why _?  You’ve got nothing to gain and all you’re doing is embarrassing yourself._ ”

“Why would I be lying?”  Julie covers her mouth daintily with one hand to giggle.  “He’s so smart and so loyal to my dad!”

“ _He’s about as_ loyal _as I am,_ ” Red snaps.  “ _Next time I see him without that_ stupid _helmet on I’ll knock some of his teeth out for you, we’ll see if you think he’s so_ perfect _and_ handsome _then!”_

“But he’s _brave_ too,” says Julie with a flash of inspiration.  “I heard you in there!  He saved your--”

 _“I don’t need saving from Burner scum!!”_ Red interrupts, sounding positively wild with rage.   _“They’ll get what’s coming to them!  I’ll_ give _it to them if Kane doesn’t get there first!”_

Julie’s stomach goes cold, and it must show on her face because Red's anger seems to recede, sated by her fear.

 _“...He didn’t tell you,”_ he says, sounding almost smug.   _“He doesn’t tell you a lot about his war with the Burners, does he?”_

I know more than you think, Julie doesn’t say.  This is no time for bravado, especially when she replays those words in her head-- _He doesn’t tell you a lot_ \--and the oddly knowing way Red said it.

“Wh...what do you mean?” she says, hoping a switch to vulnerability will lure him in.  Red laughs, a truly unpleasant sound, and dips his head.  Julie imagines that he’s looking right into her eyes, and forces herself not to blink.

 _“I_ mean _that it’s not going to be a war much longer,_ especially _if they show their faces up here again.”_

This time Julie’s sure he can see her shock, but fortunately he seems to take it as confirmation that she hadn’t heard about the Burners’ visit to Deluxe.   _“See?  You don’t know as much as you thought.”_

 _Well,_ Julie thinks, watching him go, _he’s not wrong._

The idea of staying in Deluxe is almost physically repulsive with Red’s ominous hints hanging in the air and the other Burners still in danger, but she’s sure her father will be checking up on her again before the day is over.  This time “I was at Claire’s” might not be enough.  She settles for a quick text message to Motorcity: _don’t respond.  stay away from de//uxe w those collars.  I’ll start digging as soon as I can._

And that’s that.  That’s everything she can do right now, the only things she _dares_ to do.  Julie turns away from the stunning cityscape outside the window, and starts walking toward the closest employee lounge.

She can’t just sit there and stare at nothing.  Julie dully considers making conversation with somebody, but dismisses the idea off-hand--she’s _really_ not feeling up to it right now.  But she has to do something, so she pulls out her reader tablet, turns it on and opens up the first recommended reading material in the list.

It’s a Kane Co. shopping catalogue.  Well, it’s not like she’s going to be really reading it anyway.

Julie stares dully at the Kane Co. logo on the cover for a second, and then sighs and starts scrolling absently through pages of almost-identical white and blue clothes.  Her hacking gear is in the backpack by the bed in her pod--she doesn’t dare pull it out and keep looking for Mike, or even take it anywhere with her, as long as Blue is standing at her door or hanging out looking over her shoulder.  And apparently whenever he’s gone, she’s going to have to deal with Red hanging around her instead, noticing things she really doesn’t want noticed and gloating about the fact that he knows more about Kane’s plans than Julie does.

Julie scrolls a little bit too forcefully and accidentally adds a really awful pair of Kane Co. shoes to her shopping cart.  A few futile attempts to remove them later, she has four pairs of KaneCrocs in her shopping cart.  Julie gives up and closes the catalogue completely.  It’s not like she doesn’t have the KCredits for them.  Maybe Claire will take them off her hands.

She’s ten pages into an equally uninteresting and heavily-censored book about the history of Kane Co., scrolling listlessly and wondering how much of what she’s reading is outright wrong, when somebody clears their throat quietly.

“Mm?” Julie flips to a new chapter ( _The Detroit Insurrection: The Murdercity War Begins_ ).  

_“...Miss Julie?”_

Oh.

“What do you want?”  Julie says, more nastily than she really intends to.

“ _I’ve been thinking a lot, Miss Julie,_ ” says Blue, and Julie rolls her eyes bitterly and flicks her pen a little too hard against her tablet--the page scrolls wildly, hopelessly losing her place.  “ _I have something I need to tell you.  Just...y’know, for your safety._ ”

“Really.”

“ _Yeah.”_

Julie purses her lips, reluctant.  But...regardless of what he’s done to her friends, he could still be a good source of information.  And he has to know better, at this point, than to try and make casual conversation without a reason.  If he says he has something safety-related to tell her, he really thinks there’s a problem.

“Fine.”  She puts down her tablet and swivels in her seat to face him.  “What?”

He glances around--the only others in the room are several feet away, but when he looks back at her he shakes his head firmly.  

“... _It’s not safe to talk about it here,_ ” he says.

“Oh, _good,_ ” says Julie, more than a little bit bitterly.  “You know my dad doesn’t want you talking to me.”

“ _I know my orders._ ”  Blue crosses his arms and hunches a little bit, as if behind the mask he’s uncomfortable.  “ _I just realized something.  Something really big.  Miss Julie I seriously don’t think you want me to say this here.”_

Julie chews on her lip for a moment, curiosity fighting with fear and dislike inside her.  Curiosity wins.

“Fine,” she says.  “We’ll go to my room, I guess.”   _Since apparently you can be there even if_ no one _gets to date me_ ever _,_ the thinks sourly, and then almost laughs because of how...normal teenage girl it sounds.

The weirdest things make her laugh these days.

They walk together through the blank white halls, Kane Co. employees giving them a wide berth as they go.  They’re right to, Julie thinks sourly, the memory of those white collars flashing across her mind.  With it comes the thought of Dutch and Texas and Chuck, waiting for more information, _any_ information, waiting to know if the collars are going to kill them.  Waiting for Mike.

By the time they reach her room, Julie is about ready to punch Blue in the face no matter what he says--by now, she’s not sure her dad would even mind if she did.  Blue fidgets as Julie unlocks her door, and follows her in close enough on her heels that if she stopped he would probably slam into her.  Julie hunches down and steps aside, letting him walk ahead of her into the room, putting space between them.  It’s strange to see him here, armored and dangerous and smelling of smoke, surrounded by cat plushes and family photos.

“Alright,” she says, and locks the door, ignoring the thrill of fear and apprehension that runs through her every time she’s alone in a room with that strange, white mask.  “...What’s so important?  No wait!  How about you let me guess--wouldn’t that be _fun?_ ”  It comes out on the ragged edge of hysterical for a second--Julie catches herself and takes a deep breath.  For a second she remembers her dad; snapping, yelling, thundering at people who catch him at a bad moment.  

Blue is standing there silently.  Julie glares at him, still better but less sharp now.

“...Well?”

Blue shifts uncomfortably.  “ _...Are you...gonna guess?_ ”

“I…”  Julie stares, jaw slack, not sure if he’s joking or serious, then stammers, “N...no.  That wasn’t an order.  Just tell me.”

 _“Okay,”_ says Blue, sounding relieved.   _“Just checking.”_

“Sure.  Now tell me what--”

“ _I know you’re a Burner.”_

For a second, Julie freezes.  The white mask watches her impassively as terror roots her in place, slows her thoughts to a helpless buzz of static.  

“What are you-- _talking_ about?!”  It comes out a little bit too loud, a little too late.  “That’s ridiculous!”

“ _Mister Kane ordered me to tell him about any sign of Burner activity.”_

“Are you even listening to yourself?!”  Julie laughs, but she knows it sounds high-pitched and forced and she would feel _so much better_ if she could just see a face instead of a blank reflective mask.  Does this mean he’s already told Kane?  How long does she have, how much has he said, did her dad believe him--? “I’m the last person in Deluxe you should be suspecting!”

“ _I know you’re a Burner._ ”

“Stop saying that!”

“ _I’m not going to tell him._ ”  

Julie stares at him, confused and terrified and angry all in different measures.   _How did he know_ and _why hasn’t he told anybody_ and _what does he want in exchange_?

“...Why?”  she gets out finally, small and choked and more scared than she can be proud of.  “Why would you keep that a secret?”

“ _I’ve been ordered to keep you from getting hurt and say_ nothing _about you to_ anyone,” says Blue, and one angular shoulder lifts in a shrug.  “ _That order’s the highest priority I’ve got.  So don’t worry, Jules.  Not about me anyway._ ”

Something electric and white-hot burns up Julie’s spine.

“...What...did you just call me?”

 _“Jules,”_ he says again, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world.  And even behind all the distortion, there’s something about it that reaches into her memory and ignites--comfort, encouragement, warmth.  Julie stares, mouth slack, heart beginning to pound furiously in her throat.  

Blue starts visibly, standing suddenly to attention.  “--Uh... _sorry, I mean,_ Miss Julie _.  Didn’t mean to.”_

She doesn’t feel her lips move, she hears the words as though from a distance, but it’s her voice that says, “Take off your helmet.  That’s an order.”

Blue goes still.   _“...I don’t think I should,”_ he says, taking a tiny step away from her.

“Did my father tell you not to?” she says, louder now, and then tries to take a deep, steadying breath--she can’t start screaming, not right now.

But she has to know.

_“He didn’t, but--”_

“Take off your helmet!”

 _“You won’t like it,”_ he says, but his hands are already rising slowly to his collar, thumbs hooking under the blank white mask.

“Why not?” Julie asks, her voice shaking, barely able to rise above a whisper.

Blue takes off his helmet.


	7. A Tale from the Past: Mike's Story!! (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike wakes up in Deluxe, has some banter with his arch-nemesis, and gets knocked out. Mike wakes up in Deluxe. Mike would do anything for Deluxe. Mike would do anything for Mister Kane. Harley grows progressively more concerned about the consequences of his actions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now that the most important spoiler has been gotten out of the way, it's time to review the content warnings again! Chapters 7 through 9 are all Mike flashbacks to his time as "Blue", featuring mind control/brainwashing and emotional manipulation/abuse. This chapter in particular features the one-sided beatings mentioned in the tags, so if you want to skip that just scroll ahead from "Mike doesn't really count days" down until the end of that section. I will say that's basically the worst of it, though, if anyone was worrying.  
> I know we don't have that broad of a readership base, but we appreciate all of you so much and want to take care of you!! Thanks for reading!!

 

 

( _weeks ago_ )

The first thing Mike is aware of is pain.

The second thing he’s aware of is that Kane is watching him.

There’s no conscious thought involved--Mike goes from slumped and barely conscious to lunging forward ready to fight in the space of a heartbeat.  He slams up against unforgiving restraints, a jarring impact all the way up to his shoulders.  He can tell already that testing them would only get him bruises and, if he tries too hard, broken wrists.  

Kane chuckles, that stupid, condescending little laugh that means _oh look he’s still trying to fight._  Mike glares white-hot fury at him.

Everything hurts.  Mike can’t see the people standing at either of his shoulders, but there are little tells.  Breathing.  Movement in the air.  Somebody’s gloves creak as they resettle their grip on something--soft, metallic noises.  Yeah, there are guns pointed at him.  That’s great.

“Miss me that much, huh?”  His voice is hoarse and ragged--why does _talking_ hurt?  “...how come we never hang out at _my_ place, Abe?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” says Kane, stroking his beard in mock consideration.  “Maybe because it’s a filthy, polluted hellhole full of _mutant rats_.”

“All part of the charm,” says Mike levelly as Kane circles around in front of him.  “Pretty sure two out of three are your fault, though.  Second question: why am I _still alive?_ ”

“Never destroy a faulty prototype just because the first test is disappointing,” Kane says, and smiles a predator’s smile.  “Not as long as you think you can make it work for you in the end.”

“I’m _never_ going to work for you.” Mike works his hands at the cuffs again--nothing.  “We talked about this, remember? And then you threw me off a building.  If that doesn’t count as firing me I don’t know what does.”   

“You never turned in an official notice,” says a new voice, and there’s a hint of a laugh in the words.  The boy from the bridge--Dave Chopper, if that is his real name--steps up to stand beside Kane, arms crossed.  Mike takes in the neatly-buttoned white and blue uniform, the crew cut, the gleaming name tag, the stars-and-sabers badge on his shoulder.  His eyes are bright blue, lazy and amused.  “Nice to officially meet you, Mike Chilton.”

Mike gives him a look that might be withering disgust or a sort of embittered pity--the glare he levels at Kane afterward, however, is completely unambiguous.  “Fine,” he says, pure acid in every syllable.  “I _resign._  You can have the uniform back, if you want.”

“I’m not prepared to accept your resignation,” Kane says, with silky satisfaction, and steps aside for a woman in white gloves holding something that looks like a pen.  When she twists the cap off, there’s a needle glinting at the tip of it.  “Harley.”

“Sir.”

“Restrain him.”

Commander Harley snaps off a salute and steps forward.  Mike’s hands clench in his cuffs.  He’s not getting away without a miracle, and his head feels like it’s packed to the bursting point with burning wire wool, but he’ll be _damned_ before he just rolls over and lets whatever this is happen.

“Okay.”  Harley sizes Mike up.  Mike sizes Harley up.  Tall, but no taller than Mike--about the same, probably.  Same build, too, but maybe a little thinner.  Less well-trained and less battered by a year of living hard and almost-constant fighting.  Harley may be a pretty good soldier but he’s...not Mike.  “Where do you want it, ma’am?”

“The neck,” says the woman with the injector quietly.  If she has any feelings about the proceedings, she doesn’t show any sign of them.

“Right.”  Harley lunges in to grab Mike’s jaw--okay, he’s faster than he looks.  Still not good enough.  Mike jerks to one side, avoids Harley’s hand, and kicks out.  Harley knocks his leg away and shoves forward, too close to kick, but Mike spots his chance and snaps his head forward as hard as he can.

The skull-bursting pain is immediate and vicious, bad enough it whites out his vision for a second, but he hears a _CRACK_ and a grunt.  Harley staggers, almost losing his grip but holding on doggedly.  Mike kicks again, blindly, trying to connect with a knee--Harley shoves back again with his full weight but this kid is _nothing_ and in a second he’s gonna have a black eye to go with that broken nose--

“ _If you want something done_ right _..._ ” growls Kane’s voice, and Harley loses his grip completely as he’s shoved unceremoniously away.

Strong, rough hands collide with Mike’s forehead and left shoulder, pinning him against the seat-back, fingers gripping his skull like a vice.  Harley was nothing by comparison--Kane squeezes and flashing lights explode behind Mike’s eyes.  Pain whites out conscious thought for precious seconds as Kane twists Mike’s head back and to the side, baring his throat.  Mike feels a cold, gloved hand against his neck, then the sting of a needle, and he knows it’s over.

Kane keeps his hold, ignoring Mike’s weakening struggles as his strength starts to drain and the world swims and blurs around him.  A few seconds later something cold and hard wraps around his throat with a soft _click_ and Kane finally lets go.  Mike should be glad, but all he knows is that the last solid thing in the world has been taken away.  Even the restraints and the chair under him feel loose and far away.  Everything spins.  

The last thing Mike hears as blackness spreads across his vision like ink is Kane’s voice, and he can almost see the satisfied smile.

“ _Once a Kane Co employee,_ Commander Chilton _, always a Kane Co employee._ ”

\--

Mike wakes up.  It hurts.  The room he’s in is Kane Co. white.  Quiet and calm.  

The inside of his head feels Kane Co. white.  Quiet and calm.  Mike lies in the soft, white bed and looks up at the smooth, white ceiling and wonders if he’s going to be able to serve Kane Co. to his full potential today.  Mike is a Burner, but he’d do anything for Mister Kane.

There’s something strange about that, something he should probably think about a little more before it starts to really bother him.

First though, he’d kind of like to figure out why most of his body feels pulverised.  Mike watches the occasional particle of dust float through a beam of light and feels the pain like it’s far away.  It hurts.

Somebody is talking nearby. One of the voices is somebody Mike doesn’t know.  The other one makes everything bright and white and clear and right.  It has to be Mister Kane.  He doesn’t sound happy.  Mike would like to help.  Moving is hard right now, though.  Because of the pain.

“We won’t have the power to implement any of the advances we’re making on any kind of large scale until we have access to the refined power grid,” says the woman who’s talking, cautiously, and Mike stares past her and thinks, power grid.   _Blue and white lights and towering, twisting spires…_

“It’s on the agenda,” Mister Kane says.  Mike turns his head and smiles a little bit.  The back of his neck hurts and doesn’t hurt, both.  A big chunk of his back feels...invisible.  “If that’s your only concern…”

The woman holds her clipboard against her chest.  Like armor.  “But...sir, I thought--over the past year...”

“From now on, it’s a brand new world.  Forget about last year!”

“Yes, sir,” says Mike, and forgets.

“ _What_?”  Mister Kane turns around and looks at him.  Mike smiles at him.  It’s fine that he hurts.  Everything is fine.  

“Yes sir,” Mike repeats, even though saying it once seems to have worn him out pretty bad and it comes out slurred.  “Ffffforgetsir.  Got it.”

“He was _awake_?!”  Mister Kane sounds even less happy now.  Mike and the doctor both flinch a little bit at the sound of Mister Kane yelling.  “How long has he been _awake_?”

“Long enough for you--”  she pauses to swallow, and continues, voice shaking, “long enough to hear you order him to forget.”

“I--that wasn’t for _him!_ How much did he just forget?!”

“I-I don’t know!”  Mike doesn’t know either.  Forget?  “B-but--if he took your order literally, then...a year.”

“I didn’t get a chance to _interrogate--_ ” Mister Kane takes a deep breath and pinches the bridge of his nose.  Mike doesn’t know what’s going on, but Mister Kane sounds upset.  Is it Mike’s fault?  

“ _Sssnnnghhh,_ ” he says, and rolls his head on the pillow.  His body complains, but Mister Kane turns to look at him.  A memory flashes past--Mister Kane’s hand on his shoulder, a warm smile on his face.  Mike was so happy.  He was _so happy_.  It hurts.  

“Mister Chilton?”  the doctor is coming up too, looking worried.  “Can you tell me where you are?”

Mike can see Deluxe out the window, a haze of distant, gleaming white.  There’s only one place high enough for a view like that.  

“... _K...ne...co...tower,_ ” he gets out, a little at a time, and coughing makes the back of his neck hurt but the words get stronger.  “...Sir.  Wh’happened?”

“...You failed your mission, Commander,” says Mister Kane, and ice floods through Mike’s chest.  Mister Kane sounds cold, angry.  Mike opens his mouth to say something--anything, to apologize for failing because he must have failed so badly to make Mister Kane look at him like that--but he’s already turning away.  “How soon can he be up.”

“Um…”  The doctor looks at her papers.  Soon.  Mike hopes it’s soon.  He doesn’t like sitting still.  “...A week would be the minimum, but two would--”

“Have him up in three days.”

Mike grins, kind of.  He can’t really feel some of his face.  “ _Yzzzir,_ ” he says.  Mister Kane doesn’t look down at him--he’s too busy looking at the doctor.  

The doctor fidgets.  Turns her pen over in her fingers like she’s nervous.  Mister Kane makes people that way, sometimes.  

“I’ll be up,” says Mike, clearer this time.  He bites his tongue a little bit, but there’s still numbness all the way up the back of his head and the sides of his face, so.  That’s going to happen, he guesses.  “...’ll do it.  Yes sir.”

“I didn’t ask you if you _would_ ,” Mister Kane says sharply.  “A quick recovery is the least of your duties, Commander.  Every hour you _waste_ here is valuable company time.”

It hurts.

Mike rolls onto his side, clumsy--he still can’t feel most of his back.  Tingling in his shoulderblades.  Muscles in his left shoulder don’t want to lift his arm.  He grits his teeth and pushes anyway.  The doctor moves towards him, one hand raised to push him back down, but Mister Kane’s voice interrupts her like a whipcrack.

“Leave him.”

“But--!”

“LEAVE HIM!”

A chance.  A chance to do this right.  He has to prove he won’t--mess up again.  He can’t quite remember what he did to mess up the first time, but he knows it was bad.  Not again.

He gets his legs over the side and stops because his brain feels foggy and his head is cracking open.  No matter how hard he breathes he can’t fill his lungs.  His skin feels hot and cold in waves.  From far off, Mister Kane makes a disappointed noise.

“... _Waste of time,_ ” he says.  

Mike stands up.

For a second, he looks Mister Kane in the eyes.  Something’s there, in that look--something he doesn’t understand, burned and buried, unreadable.

Then he raises a hand to salute and his legs go out from under him.  He collapses, barely catching himself on one forearm, then sways and hits the ground on one shoulder with a breathless grunt.  The impact travels through his body, instigating fresh, paralyzing jolts of pain from the back of his neck and his aching head.  The muscles he used to push himself up won’t work any more.  It hurts.  

“Sir, I need to put him back in bed--”

“Yes, you do,” says Mister Kane, and there’s a sneer in his voice.  Mike lies still and breathes.  It hurts it _hurts._  “Because he can’t crawl back on his own, can you?   _Commander_?”

_Always answer your superior officer._

“ _Nnn...sir._ ”

Hands take his arms, help pull him up onto his knees and then back and up onto the bed.  Mike hates it.  Hates how weak he is.  He’s supposed to be the best.   _(The star and sabres.  It symbolizes the_ best _in Deluxe--_ )  How did Mike ruin things this badly?  What _happened_?

Mister Kane watches him as he collapses back into bed, and Mike can’t meet his eyes. He’s a disappointment.  He failed.

“...Sir?”

Mister Kane raises an eyebrow.  “...Permission to speak, commander.”

“I’ll fix it,” Mike promises.  “Whatever I did.  I’ll fix it, sir, I swear.”

\--

“He... _forgot_ everything?” says Alex, frowning.

“Did I _stutter_ , Commander?”

“No, sir!  I just--that’s not a result I was expecting!  I had an outline for testing the breadth of your control, and I may have to re-write--”

“That won’t be necessary,” says Mister Kane, waving a huge, dismissive hand.  Alex swallows his objections--just sending Mister Kane the first outline may have been pushing it.  Better not to test his luck.

“Was...did you have a question for me, sir?”

Mister Kane huffs through his nose, eyes narrowing under his bushy ginger brows.  “I _did_ , Harley, but if you don’t know what your _own_ tech can do…”

“I’ll give it my best shot,” says Alex, though not with his usual confidence.  It’s been a strange couple of days.  Interacting one-on-one with Mister Kane isn’t quite what he expected, and his first descent into Motorcity--with that freak in the black-and-red suit, no less--didn’t improve his mood.

Neither did getting nose broken by Mike Chilton, for that matter.  Alex’s hand goes absentmindedly to his bruised face while Mister Kane thinks.

“...Alright, Harley.  Should I make Chilton remember?”

Alex’s spine kind of seizes up.  Abraham Kane isn’t known to ask “should” questions, especially not to his R&D workers.  If he says this the wrong way, he might get thrown off the top of Kane Co. Tower, no questions asked.

No _further_ questions asked, he amends.

“Well, sir,” he starts, as evenly as he can, and pauses, actually thinking about the question.  “...I…wouldn’t _advise_ you to do that.”  There.  That sounds better than _well I have no idea but probably no._  Mister Kane is still watching him, apparently expecting more than that.  Alex clears his throat and goes on, trying to put some measure of authority behind the words.  “This tech is less ‘mind control’ and more of a powerful form of suggestion, which means theoretically it can be fought.  Chilton is much less likely to fight your control if he doesn’t remember...everything.  An entire year of his life spent--uh, being rebel scum--would be hard for him to rationalize away, even under the best circumstances.  Sir.  You...you might even be lucky that this happened this early on, sir.”

There’s a long moment of silence.  Then Mister Kane goes _hmm_.  

That’s either very good or very bad.  Alex sits still and tall, at attention, waiting for a response.

“He has information in his head from the past year that I _want,_ ” Mister Kane says finally, pointedly, and leans over Alex, throwing him into an intimidatingly huge shadow.  “If making him remember isn’t an option, we need an alternative.  I expect you to make that happen, Commander Harley.”

“I’ll start working on it right away, sir,” says Alex smartly, and throws off his sharpest salute.  “I won’t let you down.”

“Mm,” says Mister Kane again, and folds his hands behind his back, turning away.  “No.  You won’t.”

Alex watches him go, but he doesn’t dare open up his desktop again until three minutes after Mister Kane’s broad back has vanished through the door.  He stares morosely at his screen for a second, and then minimizes his work projects window and posts a melancholy black-and-white selfie on Kanebook.

\--

It’s three days after the implantation surgery.  Alex is tinkering with the new and improved combat-oriented concussive-force-generator when Mister Kane sends him a message.  Alex hastily fixes up his uniform, makes sure his nametag is perfectly straight, and jogs to the nearest elevator.

When he gets to the training rooms he’s been summoned to, Mister Kane is standing there waiting, along with the guy in the red and black jumpsuit who helped capture Mike Chilton.  The guy in the black and red has his arms crossed and is aggressively tapping his foot.  Mister Kane has a comm screen open.

“...to the third simulation room,” he says as Alex marches up and stands at attention.  “ _Now,_ Commander Chilton.”

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

Mister Kane barely glances at him.  “It’s time to see what Chilton can do,” he says.  “You’re going to put him through his paces.”

The guy in black makes a derisive noise.  “ _You want me to fight Chilton?”_ he asks, performatively unimpressed.   _“As he is now I can’t see it being much of a--”_

“No!” Mister Kane snaps, and then suddenly grins, apparently taken by the genius of what he’s about to say.  “...No, I want you and _Harley_ to fight Chilton.”

There’s a pause.  Alex, whose nose still throbs whenever he breathes too hard, swallows as inconspicuously as possible and stays at attention.  

 _“That idiot you keep around because he doesn’t question your orders?”_ The guy in black sounds 100% unimpressed.   _“What if I K.O. him first and have Chilton all to myself?’_

Mister Kane rolls his eyes.  “ _Harley,_ not _Tooley_.”

 _Yeah, I’m way more impressive than_ Tooley _,_ says the small part of Alex’s brain that doesn’t know how to shut up.  Alex hates that part of his brain.  He keeps his mouth shut.

_“Well, forgive me for not being a model Kane Co. employee and knowing all my coworkers’ names.  It’s not like you pay me.”_

“I don’t care what you do, as long as you don’t use any of your suit’s...special features,” Mister Kane growls, waving Alex over.  Alex steps smartly forward.  “Just make Chilton show us what he’s capable of.”

_“With pleasure.”_

“Good,” says Mister Kane.  “Commander Harley, are you ready?”

“Yes, sir,” says Alex, saluting.  The guy in black makes a small coughing noise, muffled by his voice filters.  Alex glances at him and raises an eyebrow.  “What was that?”

 _“Nothing_ ,” says the guy in black blankly, then turns on his heel to stalk away.   _“Tell me when Chilton gets here.”_

“Huh,” says Alex, watching him go.  “Doesn’t like his job much, does he?”

Mister Kane doesn’t answer.

\--

After spending three whole days in bed with doctors watching him 24/7, Mike is finally out of the little white room and moving again.  It feels great!  He does wonder whether they’ll let him to back to his old room in the barracks--all his stuff is there--but he’ll ask later.  He had yesterday to stretch and go for a run in one of the training rooms, and now he’s ready to be out in the field again.  Maybe Mister Kane has something new for him to do today?  Mike’s ready to do his best for Mister Kane.  ( _For Kane and Detroit Deluxe!_ says a faint, bitter voice in the back of his mind, gone and forgotten as soon as it comes.)

He’s dressed in the familiar old Kane Co. uniform, collar popped, sleeves rolled up.  The only major difference is the white cloth mask covering everything but his eyes--it’s usually part of the Ultra-Elite uniform, but Mister Kane wants him to wear it so Mike does.  It’s fine.

Outside the windows, the sky is the same comforting blue as always, the clouds serene and white above the hovering towers.  Mike knows the sight should make him feel calm, reassured, and--and it does, it does, he’s fine.  But there’s also a tiny seed of unease deep in the calmness.  

Mike shivers, and then the moment passes and he’s left staring out at Deluxe and the citizens he swore to protect and support.

 _“We’re_ waiting _, Commander Chilton,”_ says Mister Kane’s voice in his comm.

“Yes sir!” Mike half-jogs the rest of the way there, pleased to find himself not out of breath at all by the time he reaches the end.  Looks like bedrest hasn’t had any real negative effects!  He can do this.

He recognizes the room he’s been summoned to as soon as he walks in the door.  It’s an observation balcony above one of the tower training gyms, one Mike’s squad used to work in.  It’s nice to be back!  Even if it’s weird to be here by himself.

Mister Kane is standing by the window, his back to Mike, looking down at the open area below.  As Mike enters and snaps to attention, he turns around.  Mike waits for further orders, keenly aware of the stern, sharp gaze fixed on him.

“Good,” says Mister Kane after a moment.  “But try to arrive _on time_ , Commander.  And take off that mask.”

“Yes, sir!”

Mister Kane smiles.  Mike also smiles, rolling up the white cloth mask and stowing it in a pocket.  He’ll do better from now on.

“Why am I here, sir?”

Mister Kane gestures to the training room floor, where two people are already warming up.  “You see them?”

“Sir.”  Mike squints down at them.  One of them is in a Kane Co. uniform, just like the one Mike’s wearing.  “Is that...was he in my squad, sir?”

“You have never met Commander Harley before,” says Mister Kane., and Mike immediately feels dumb.  Of course he hasn’t.  He’s never met Commander Harley.

“Yes sir,” he says.  “I’ve never met Commander Harley.  I see them, sir.”

“Fight them,” says Mister Kane.  “Eliminate them.”

“Yes, sir!” says Mike.  This makes sense.  Fight, eliminate.  He can do that, he’s really good at that.  He’s the best Kane Co. has.  He’s going to make Mister Kane proud.

“Dismissed!”

Mike salutes and makes his way through a door, down in the elevator, and out into the training room.  It’s big and white and...empty, which is weird because Mike has memories of it in use--group drills and holographic replays of practice skirmishes.  Where’s his squad?  Why are they here alone like this?  

Mike looks up at the observation window where Mister Kane is standing, and sees him smiling.   _Make me proud_.  Mike will.

The two other guys turn to look at him as he approaches them; Commander Harley in the standard Kane Co. cadet uniform and one in red and black.  Mike doesn’t mind Commander Harley, has never met him before, but the second guy he definitely wants to hit.  There’s a memory flickering in and out of focus in the back of his mind, of that red and black mask and the crack and thump of fists--

\--he wants to beat that guy.

 _“Begin on my mark,”_ says Mister Kane, his voice booming through the practice room’s speakers.  The masked guy settles into his stance with a faint sound of metal sliding over metal.  Harley bounces on the balls of his feet, loosening up.  Mike just braces himself a little, ready to run forward.

 _“Ready,”_ says Mister Kane.  Mike is ready.

 _“Set.”_ \--And the masked guy is already on the move, throwing two sharp jabs right at Mike’s face.  Mike just barely slides to one side, feeling the air move over his face in the wake of the punch.  Can’t start yet, have to wait for Mister Kane to say--

_“Go!”_

And now Harley’s on the move, moving fast and sure, but Mike recognizes every move they learned in basic training and it’s easy to avoid--

Something slams into the back of his leg and Mike drops, but he turns it into a roll and springs up before the masked guy can kick him again, backing up, giving himself space to keep an eye on both of his attackers at the same time.

“Is that the best you two got?” he asks, and cracks a little grin when the masked guy makes a soft growling noise--someone’s hot-headed.  This’ll be easier than he thought.

Then the masked guy surges forward again and whoa, maybe “easy” is too strong of a word.  This guy is _fast_ , and he puts everything he’s got into every punch, fighting like a guy with a grudge.  Mike ducks, blocks, flips over the sweep of one heavy black boot, but it’s not enough--Harley’s trying to circle around into a blind spot, ineffectual for now but drawing Mike’s focus away from the masked guy and his lightning-fast punches.  

Mike catches a blow from one side, then from the other, then yells in surprise as the masked guy catches his right arm and twists it violently.  Mike manages to break his hold and throw a clumsy kick at the guy’s gut, but he dodges back, and then Harley tries to catch Mike in a headlock.  

Muscle memory takes over for a split second and Mike ducks down, catches himself on his hands, and donkey-kicks Harley squarely in the chest.  Not a muscle memory Mike remembers training for, but he’ll take it.  No big deal.  Mike lands in a crouch next to the prone and winded Harley and barely has time to breathe before Red ( _Red?_ ) flickers into his vision, one leg raised high for a brutal axe kick.  Mike opts to block instead of dodging, grunts as the masked guy’s ( _Red’s?_ ) armored calf smashes into his forearms.  It hurts.

Mike swings both arms out, sending Red stumbling backwards, and regains his own balance while Harley gets up.  Slow, dizzy.  Mike can take him out first and--

\--and apparently Red had the same idea. Mike thinks for a split second he’s going to help Harley up as he strides over, but then Red drives one heel brutally hard into Harley’s right knee, and Harley screams.

Mike winces, staring uncomprehendingly at Red.  “Hey!” he yells, and starts to jog toward them.  Surely the fight’s over now--any second Mister Kane will see what happened and call a halt.  “Dude!  Why would you do that?”

But the only answer he gets is a blur of red and black coming for his face.  Mike grunts as a fist glances off his cheek and makes one last attempt to duck past Red for Harley--no use.  Red’s got his heart set on a one-on-one fight and there’s still no word from Mister Kane to stop.  Mike growls in frustration and backs away, dodging and weaving as Red takes wild swings at any part of Mike within his reach.

This time they stay engaged longer, trading blows at close quarters with no time for words.  Mike lands a side-kick on Red’s thigh, coughs as a sharp elbow sinks into his gut, drives a fist into that impassive red and black helmet with all his strength.  His knuckles crack against the smooth, hard surface, but Red’s head whips back and he staggers, stance loosening as he tries to find his balance.

Mike glances down at his split knuckles, then back up at his opponent, smiling.  “Well gee, Red, looks like your face punches back.”

And then he spins smoothly on one foot and slams the other into Red’s ribs.  Red grunts breathlessly, but he doesn’t go down; he catches Mike’s leg between his arm and side, pins it and winds up, raising an elbow to do to Mike’s knee what he did to Harley’s.  Mike makes one aborted attempt to pull away and then gives up on that and pushes forward instead, slamming his head into the flat visor of Red’s helmet.  

He sees white for a second, but the hold on his leg loosens and he retreats, at the ready, all his senses primed to compensate for his blurred vision.  Hears the footsteps, sees the streak of red coming closer, feels the air shift and draws back a fist, ready to defend himself--

_“Stop.”_

In the moment that Mister Kane’s voice rings out in the wide, white, echoing space, Mike feels every injury overcome the muting buzz of adrenaline and _throb_.  He stops in his tracks, barely remembering to lean to one side as Red makes a wordless noise of fury and frustration and throws another punch, ignoring Mister Kane’s order.  Mike is backing away, not fighting any more, but Red keeps following him and the next jab catches Mike across the cheek.  He feels a hot trickle trace a line from his cheekbone down to his jawline, he feels panicky confusion rising inside him and pressure on a wall inside him, words _fighting_ inside him-- _Why didn’t he do what Mister Kane told him?  You have to, you have to do that, you_ have _to--_

But Red’s drawing back both fists for a hammer-blow, and this time there’s red energy crackling around them and Mike has to dodge but he has to stop but he has to dodge but--

_“I said STOP!”_

And finally, Red does.  Inches from Mike, his breath a rapid, staticky pulse behind the mask, fists still raised and aimed at Mike’s face.  Mike leans forward until his bruised forehead bumps against Red’s mask and glares into it, beyond it.  As close to looking Red in the eyes as he can get.

 _“I could finish you, Chilton”_ Red snarls.   _“That’s why he stopped it when he did.”_

“Sure,” says Mike, grinning.  “Maybe take off the helmet next time, we’ll see how that goes.”

He holds up his bleeding knuckles between them as an illustration, and Red’s drawn-back fist twitches.  But before either of them can make a move something in the corner of Mike’s eye makes him turn his head.  He doesn’t have to look around to know who it is.  The back of his neck aches and it hurts and there’s only one person who could make that white, soft fog swallow up everything bad and wrong in Mike’s brain.  Mike stands to attention and salutes, all thoughts of Red forgotten.  

There are other people with Mister Kane; Mike breaks attention for a second to grab his mask and pull it on.  He never had to wear a mask before, and it’s just some MediKane people who ignore him to go straight for Harley, but those are his orders and Mike is good at following orders.  Even if he’s totally bleeding on the white mask.

“You’re on my _property_ ,” Mister Kane barks at Red as he comes closer.  “You’re using my _equipment_.  You’ll do as I _say_!”

 _“I thought we were supposed to fight until there was a winner,”_ says Red.   _“I’m done playing around,_ Kane.   _Just don’t forget, he’s mine when you’re through with him.”_

“Hey!” says Mike, firing up.  “What’s your problem with me, man?  And if you’re not going to respect Mister Kane, why would you work for him?”

Red bristles.   _“Oh, don’t worry,_ Chilton _, I’ll make sure you remember me before I finish you off.”_

“What does that--”

“Alright,” says Mister Kane loudly.  “That’s enough!  Don’t make me repeat myself, Commander Chilton.”

“Sir!” says Mike.  Can’t let down Mister Kane.  Can’t fail.

To his relief, Mister Kane seems satisfied.  While Red backs away to lean against the wall (Mike is pleased to see he’s limping a little), Mister Kane walks over to Harley, who’s just getting situated on a stretcher while a young man industriously wraps medical tape around his knee.

\--

“Commander Harley,” says Kane impassively, looking him over.  “Injured by your own teammate.”

“It’s alright, sir,” says Harley, patting his leg.  “Girls love a man who can handle himself in a fight.  Actually, there’s this cute lady I see around sometimes--”

“I don’t care,” says Kane, deadpan.  He half-turns to walk away and then, seeming to remember something, looks back at Harley and says, “This is all top-secret, Commander.  You _understand_ that, right?”

“Of course, sir,” says Harley, smiling and saluting.

“Good,” says Kane, “Because I want you working on equipment for Chilton.  Choose your men from the R&D department, and I’ll send you the details later.”

Harley exhales what might be the tiniest sigh of relief.  “Sounds good, sir.”

Kane nods to the MediKane workers.  “Take him away.”

And now it’s just these two, seemingly polar opposites and yet so similar in some ways.  Kane can’t believe, looking at them, that his two best fighters are both car-driving, Deluxe-hating _children_ , even if one of them doesn’t remember being those things at the moment. Chilton has removed his mask again, and he’s still standing where he was when the fight ended, staring bemusedly into the distance like he’s trying to remember something, frowning faintly.   And Red…

Red is stomping towards Kane, fists clenched, sparking faintly.  Kane turns to face him, waiting as Red closes the ground between them in sharp, angry strides.  

“Well?”

“ _Why did you stop the fight._ ”

Everything about him, from the tone of his voice to the way he stands, fists clenched, is petulantly enraged.  Kane doesn’t bother to hide his sneer.  “That’s none of your concern.”

“ _He’s not getting out of this_ ,” Red snarls.  “ _I want-_ -”

“You’ve made it _clear_ what you want _,_ ” Kane snaps.  “...You’ll get your chance.”  He glances over at Chilton, who’s watching them with wide, confused eyes.  The artificially-restored trust in those eyes is child-like, vulnerable as a target painted on his chest.  Kane remembers when that look was genuine, when he thought he’d found a young man who shared his own drive and dedication.  His own passion to do whatever was necessary for Deluxe.

 _You were like a_ son _to me!_

Not anymore.

The familiar anger burns in his spine, squeezes his skull, and maybe Red can see it because he backs off, still grumbling, and heads for the door with quick, stabbing strides.

Mike approaches him a moment later, still bloodied, bright with adrenaline.  Whatever drove Red to turn away, Mike obviously sees it too; it makes him pause, eyes widening, and then to take a respectful step back and salute.

“...Sir?”

The urge to shut him down is overwhelming--that flash of honest hurt in his eyes is pettily satisfying every time.  But if Harley’s reports are correct, the less his loyalty is tested outside of missions, the better.  Kane sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose and lets some of the anger sink away again.  For now.

“...Permission to speak, Commander.”

\--

Mike relaxes.  That’s good.  It’s good that he’s allowed to ask, and it’s good that Mister Kane doesn’t sound mad any more.  Whatever he was talking to Red about, it must have _really_ made him mad.  The look on his face made Mike feel sick for just a second--sick like a punch in the gut or a broken bone.  It’s...not good, thinking about that.  It hurts.

“Sir,” he says again instead, and glances over Mister Kane’s shoulder, watching Red walk away, “Do I...do I know him?  I feel like I know him.”

Mister Kane watches him silently and doesn’t answer.  The silence feels empty, like it’s waiting.  Mike keeps talking.

“--I remember...things, sometimes, since I woke up.  Doing things I know I didn’t do, people I don’t…” He pauses, because there isn’t a word for it--he knows them, they feel as familiar as the lines of his palms, but he doesn’t know who they are.  He sees them, but doesn’t remember what they look like.  Movements he doesn’t remember learning come easily to his body.  And that double-fisted, crackling hammer-blow the guy in the red mask aimed at his face was already there in the back of his mind.

“-- _mander Chilton_!”

Mike takes a sharp, deep breath and wakes up.  Mister Kane doesn’t look happy--Mike’s being a disappointment.  Failing.  He straightens up and stands at attention.  “I apologize sir!”

“Don’t worry about those things, Commander.  It’s your job to _serve Deluxe_.”

“Yes, sir, but--”

“But _what_ , Commander?”

Mike isn’t sure what he was going to say, but there has to be _something_ that’ll alleviate the empty, aching feeling in his chest.  “Now that I’m good to go again,” he blurts out, “couldn’t I stay in my old barracks with the other cadets, sir?  I’m sure Jenzen needs someone to keep him in line and--”

“No,” says Mister Kane.  It’s cold, final, and absolute.  Mike doesn’t even consider asking again.

“Okay, sir,” he says.

The next few days are spent training.  He’s with the elites, wearing one of their uniforms with the mask and helmet.  He wishes he could take the mask off like he did last time--it’s hard to breathe under there.  But he still takes down three in under a minute, and it’s nowhere _near_ as rough as the fight with the two guys from the other day.  Mike’s surprised at how _easy_ it is, how easily the new moves come to him.  Classic Kane Co. security force fighting techniques move in straight lines, focus on the most direct route to victory.  Mike’s body spins and flips and dances without his permission, and there’s something about it that worries him, but he can’t quite seem to access the thoughts behind that worry.  

So he wins, and wins, and every time Mister Kane gives him that look--approval, but not pride.  Satisfied, but cold.  It hurts.  

Mike doesn’t know what he’s doing wrong.  Mike would do anything for Mister Kane.

\--

Mike doesn’t really count days, but it doesn’t seem like too long until he’s summoned for what looks like another real fight.  He’s glad--the elite aren’t exactly as _elite_ as he’d expected.

It’s the same practice room.  Harley isn’t there.  Red is.  So is Mister Kane.

“Still tardy, Commander,” Mister Kane says when Mike stops in front of him and salutes.  Mike wants to say he’s sorry, say he went as fast as he could--but a good Kane Co. soldier doesn’t make excuses.  He does better.  Mike will do better.  “You have another combat trial today.”

The way he says the words makes something strange and almost fearful jolt up Mike’s spine, like he’s ready to fight _right now_ \--but it’s just Mister Kane right now.  He would never fight Mister Kane.  ( _fist in the guts like a hammer,_ you were like a _son--_ )

He would NEVER fight Mister Kane.

“You want me to fight him again, Mister Kane?”  That flash of something-not-remembered made Mike’s stomach lurch.  It hurts.  He needs an order to follow, something to remind him who he works for.  Remind him where he belongs. He doesn’t want to hit punching bags and fight dull, unimaginative soldiers.  

He _does_ want to fight Red again.  

“No.”  Mister Kane puts a hand on his shoulder, and it’s so nice.  It’s so good, a reminder of something that used to be the most important thing.  Is still the most important thing.  “You’re not going to fight.”

Not fighting is wrong.  Doesn’t make sense.  Mike is good at fighting.  It’s hard to breathe, so Mike pulls the mask off--it’s okay, if it’s Red, he knows...something, he’s allowed to see.  

It’s not any easier to breathe.  “Sir?”  Mike says.

“I want you to prove to me that you can take it, Commander,” says Mister Kane, and the words make something hot and boiling and confused bubble up in Mike’s throat.   _Prove to me,_ yes, yes he can do that, he can do whatever Mister Kane needs him to do.  But…

“...He’s got some kind of problem with me, sir,” Mike says, as clear and respectful as he knows how, and shifts his weight as across the room Red swings his arms, rolls his shoulders.  Watches them.  “If I don’t defend myself he’ll put me out of commission.”

“Are you _scared,_ Commander?”

It hurts.

“No sir,” Mike says, because he’s not.  “I want to defend this city, sir.  I want to do my duty.  I can’t do it from a hospital bed.”

Mister Kane watches him for a second.  Mike hopes he doesn’t sound like he’s questioning orders--he’ll do it.  Of course he’ll do it.  He’ll do whatever he’s ordered, but another long half-week in that small white room with nothing to do but wait will drive him insane.  Mike stands at attention and waits.

“You’ll heal, Commander,” says Mister Kane.  Mike wonders whether it’s a prediction or an order.

“Yes, sir,” he says.  He’ll heal.  He’ll be fine.

He can take it.

When Red walks over, cracking his knuckles, Mike tenses up but doesn’t move.   _Don’t move.  Don’t fight._

Mister Kane watches him a little longer, then looks at Red instead.  “No broken bones,” he says.  “Nothing that would take more than a week to fix.  No tech.”

 _“No promises,”_ says Red.  Mike can hear a smile in his voice and balls his hands into fists, wanting more than anything to punch him in the gut-- _not more than anything_.  Mister Kane is watching.  Mike has his orders.

“Start,” says Mister Kane, and Red cracks his knuckles.  Every muscle in Mike’s body screams at him to _fight_ , but Mike has his orders.  Mike has his orders.  Mister Kane’s orders.

The first punch breaks his nose.  

Mike staggers back and starts to raise his fists to defend himself--but those aren’t his orders.  Kane Co. needs him to prove himself.  Mister Kane told him not to fight, not to resist, and Mike is going to do a good job for him he’s going to be the _best_ \--

The second punch knocks the air out of him, and Mike forces his hands down to his sides and just barely stays on his feet and breathes and _breathes._

_It hurts._

“Not too bad,” he says roughly.  “Could stand to work on that right.”

 _“You--!”_ A quick barrage to his ribs, merciless, _crack-crack-thump_ , and then an uppercut Mike barely remembers to clench his teeth for.  Pain explodes in his jaw--the room rocks--he lands on his back, _trying to breathe, can’t breathe--_

“Stand up, Commander Chilton.”

Stand up.  Mike has his orders.  Mike pushes himself up with both hands, up off the floor, up off his knees, but before he can make it upright Red’s foot slams into his thigh and he drops again.  Stand up.  He pushes up, dizzy, doesn’t see the fist coming for his face, and this time his teeth slice into the inside of his cheek when the blow lands.

Mike is tired of the taste of blood.  Stand up.  The room is sideways and his vision is swimming.  Stand up.  It hurts stand up you could fight him you could _win_ you can’t you can’t you can’t.  It hurts.   _Stand up._

He does, and this time Red lets him find his balance on both feet before crashing into him, driving his back against a wall so Mike can’t fall over and-- _crack-crack-thump--_ impact, pain, over and over.  He opens his mouth to say something-- _”Come on, you can do better than that”_ , something like that--but he can barely see, let alone speak.  He blacks out once but comes to still standing, one hard, black-gloved hand gripping his jaw.

 _“How’s_ this-- _for a--right?”_ snarls Red, and his other fist crashes into Mike’s left eye.  The cut Red left on Mike’s cheek after their last fight must have reopened, because he can feel something trickling down his face.

“ _Not...bad…”_ he wheezes, and blacks out again.

Mike opens his eyes.  His back is against something cold and hard.  Everything hurts. It hurts.  Is he still standing?  Does he still need to stand up?  Everything is very bright and hazy.  He’s on his feet.  Mister Kane is across the room; he swims and blurs.  Red is listening to Mister Kane talk.  Mike has to listen too, stand up and listen.  Mike is bleeding.  It hurts.  He can feel the bruises setting in all across his face, his chest, his arms and stomach, battered black and blue.  His face feels hot and sticky with blood.  Chuck is going to _freak out_ when he sees _\--_

“Chuck,” says Mike, and the name--the memory--cuts through the comfortable white haze like a sudden, painfully sharp burst of light.  He pushes himself away from the wall on arms that ache, trying to get his feet under him.  “--he doesn’t know what happened, I gotta--”

The leg that Red kicked out from under him pounds with agony as he tries to put weight on it--the muscle of his thigh feels pulverised.  Mike grits his teeth on a groan and forces himself to stand anyway.  He’s supposed to make sure Chuck’s okay.  Even if he’s been--been getting better, when did he start getting better?  He can’t look after himself ( _he can survive without you, they all can_ ).

Mike tries to understand that thought, tries to think through the roaring in his ears and remember who _they_ are, but the thought whips away from him ( _like a flash of green metal and polished chrome in an icy whirlwind_ ) like water slipping through his fingers.  But Chuck.  Chuck is still at home.  He has to be.  Taking his classes, staying up too late, forgetting to make himself food without Mike there.   _Dammit._

“Mister Kane, sir,” says Mike urgently.  The blood in his mouth slurs his words.  Mister Kane turns and frowns.

“I thought you said he was unconscious.”

Red glances over and growls softly to himself.  He starts to walk toward Mike.  Mister Kane cuts him off.  Mike stands and wonders if he’s allowed to fight back now.  He doesn’t want to let that happen again.  It hurts.

“No,” says Mister Kane.  “Leave him.”

“ _I’m going to finish this._ ”

“I said _no._ ”

“ _You said I could--_ ”

“Don’t get _greedy_ ,” says Mister Kane, and Mike sways as everything throbs.  His legs want to buckle.  He stays where he is.  “It was over when you walked away!”  He looks at Mike--Mike’s arm hurts from holding it in a salute.  His breathing is a wheezy gurgle as salt and iron fill his mouth and nose, filling his senses with the familiar sickly taste-smell-feeling of blood.  It hurts.  “Commander Chilton will be defending himself as usual from now on,” says Mister Kane, and Mike knows it’s an order.  “You two are going to get along or I’m going to have to provide... _incentive_.”

Mike doesn’t need incentive.  He’s not like Red.  He’s a good employee.  An asset and a credit to the company.  He stands to attention as Red clenches his hands into fists and hisses through his mask, then turns and walks away in fast, angry strides.  He punches a wall on the way out, an echoing _clang_ of metal on metal.  

Mike stands to attention.  He’s an exemplary Commander.  He’s bleeding for that title.  It’s the least he can do, for Mister Kane and Deluxe City.

“Sir,” he says again.  “Mister Kane.  I--” he has to stop--swallow blood, sour in the back of his throat.  His nose throbs.  “--I need--to request leave, sir.”

He knows the second it leave his mouth it’s stupid.  Mister Kane’s brows rise.  His eyes narrow.

“ _Leave_?”

“I--my best friend, sir, he doesn’t know where I am--”

“Oh, I see,” says Mister Kane.  His voice is harsh.  It hurts.  “Your _friend._  Well, how can the good of Kane Co. compare to you and your friend chatting about classified Kane Co. information?  By all means, go tell your _friend_ what you’ve been up to, Commander.”

The implication is a slap in the face.  That he would spread classified information, betray his mission, betray _Kane Co._ \--Mike flinches from the idea.  It’s unthinkable.  “Sir,” he says again.  He can’t think of the words to say.  “--Sir, I swear--if I could just tell him I’m okay--”

“No.”

It’s final.  It feels like the words sink into him somehow, burn into his soul--Mike shudders.  But…

“...Then--if there’s any way, just to make sure he’s doing alright without me--”

Mister Kane almost pulls him off his feet.  Mike staggers, breathless with pain as the hand pulls him up by his collar.  He barely keeps his feet and the _cold air whips past him, the last traces of fading sunset burning in Kane’s eyes and there’s nothing he can do to save himself_ don’t let go don’t let me fall _\--_

“ _Are you_ questioning _a_ direct order _?_ ”  Mister Kane hisses, and Mike snaps back to himself with a gasp as the sudden, paralyzing fear--the sense of gaping _distance_ under his feet--drains away again.  “ _Drop it,_ Commander Chilton, and don’t bring it up again.  That is an _order._  I am not discussing your _friends_ with you, and your relationships are not Kane Co.’s priority!”

He lets go.  For a second, Mike is falling and a breathless rush of pure fear freezes his spine.

Then he hits the ground, and there’s just pain.

“Are we _clear_.”

_Always answer your commanding officer._

“... _Yessir,_ ” says Mike, and spits blood on the pure white floor.  The red swims in front of his eyes.  “ _Crystal clear, sir._ ”

“Good.  You’ll have a mission before the week is over,” says Mister Kane.  “Three orders, Chilton, are you listening?”

“Yes, sir.”  Mike is listening.

“Don’t speak to anyone from outside Deluxe.”

One.  “Yes, sir.”

“Protect the back of your neck.  The implant there that lets me...relay orders...is very delicate.”

Two.  “Yes, sir.”  Mike feels a surge of urgency from this order--Mister Kane’s orders are the most important thing.

“Always remember that you belong in Deluxe.”

Three.  “I belong in Deluxe, sir,” says Mike obediently.  His body pulses with pain.  It hurts.

“Good,” says Mister Kane.

\--

Kane finds Alex Harley bandaged up at his station in the research and development department, looking disgruntled.  He’s got a set of screens laid out in front of him and appears to be checking something off on them.  When Kane comes in, scattering scientists in front of him like a shoal of fish in front of a shark, Harley looks up and then minimizes them immediately and snaps to attention instead.  

“Sir!  How did it--?”

“It _looks_ like your tech is reliable,” says Kane, and Harley relaxes a little.

“You started on the trials?” he says.  “That’s good, how many stages did you finish today?”

“He took a beating from Red for five minutes straight,” says Kane.  When he smiles, it’s predatory.  “...just because I _told_ him to.”  

Harley goes pale, then swallows and says hoarsely, “My suggestions--”

“Would have taken weeks to follow,” says Kane dismissively.  “It’s been two days and I already know he’s ready to be in the field.  That’s _efficiency_ , Commander!”

“Yes sir,” says Harley.  Kane frowns at him, trying to gauge what the boy needs to hear right now.

“Have you talked to that girl yet?” he asks casually, and is pleased to see some of the apprehension leave Harley’s face.

“Not yet, sir!  I’ve been on break getting this leg back in working order.”

“Maybe it’s time,” Kane rumbles in his most kindly voice.  “Tell her you’re working on something top-secret.  That’ll impress her.”

Harley laughs weakly.  “...But if it’s top secret--”

“Oh, I’m not saying you’d _tell_ her what it was,” says Kane, then leans closer to Harley’s face.  Despite his height, the boy seems to shrink under his eyes.  “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Commander?”

“Of course not, sir,” Harley replies.  Kane smiles.

“Good.”  And then, in a sudden, military bark, “You’re dismissed!”

Harley half-runs out of the room, still favoring his left leg, and Kane watches him leave.  Nothing to worry about, he thinks.  At the onset he thought he saw something dangerously familiar in the boy--fighting skill, level-headedness, perhaps a knack for leadership--but he’s no Chilton.  That’s good.  Kane is done with Chiltons.

Well...for the most part.


	8. A Tale from the Past: Mike’s Story!! (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The limits of his loyalty tested, Commander Chilton goes on his first-ever mission to Motorcity! And all the danger and explosions and cars are not fun or exhilarating at all, because Mike belongs in Deluxe. He belongs in Deluxe. Meanwhile, Commander Harley tries hard to remain impartial to the infamous Chilton Charm.  
> It's not working.

 

 

“You’ll have your first mission today,” says Mister Kane.

The words feel so strangely familiar, like they’re echoing somehow.  Bouncing off something in Mike’s head.  He wants to focus on the feeling but as soon as he tries to grasp it, it slips away.  “...Yessir,” he says quickly, but he can tell by the impatient twist of Mister Kane’s mouth that he noticed the delay.   _Do better._  Even healing from his... _fight_ with Red, he can still do his best.  “--I’m ready, sir.  Whatever you need me to do.”

“Mm.”  Mister Kane gives him a long, long look.  Mike can’t read it--what he’s searching for, why it lingers for so long--he sits as straight as he can, fighting the adrenaline jitters that want him to tap a foot or shift in his seat.  “Alright,” says Mister Kane.  And then, sharp and sudden like he’s trying to catch Mike by surprise, “--where do you belong?”

“I belong in Deluxe, sir!”

Mister Kane smiles.  It’s a small smile, barely amused, but it makes Mike’s chest feel tight and proud and painful.  It burns like he’s filling up inside with too-hot water.

“And do you know who Deluxe’s greatest enemy is?”

He...should, that’s definitely something he should know.  Should have learned it during school, right?  But there’s no one name that comes to mind.  No “who”.  In school, Deluxe’s enemies were things like “ _chaos, unrest and disorderly conduct_ ”.  

“I don’t know, sir.”

“Our enemy is the _Burners_ ,” says Mister Kane, with a snarl in his voice on the last word.  Mike sits up straighter, righteous anger already stirring in his chest.  “They lure our citizens down into that cesspool they call a city and tell them they’ll be _free._  But the only freedom in Motorcity is the freedom to cower and live off scraps, while their anarchist gangs tear apart the city.”

“If people just knew how much better it is in Deluxe, sir,” starts Mike, but Mister Kane is already shaking his head.  The bruises on Mike’s chest and face throb, sudden and sharp.  Why does it hurt?  “Sir?”

“They wouldn’t listen to you, Commander,” says Mister Kane, and pulls up a file--notes, maps, blurry shots of brightly-colored cars surrounded by wreckage and destruction.  Mike’s chest constricts and he doesn’t know why.  “You’re a member of Kane Co. security.  You’d be lucky to get a word out before one of those thugs put you down.”

“We’re here to protect our citizens,” says Mike, a little stung.  He remembers that, he knows, he took the oath.  The security force’s mission is to protect and serve, always for the good of Deluxe.  He pulls up a screen, flipping through the file.  Reconnaissance and sabotage.  Not his strong point, but it doesn’t matter.  He’ll do anything.  “Protect and serve, sir.”

“I know,” says Mister Kane, and his voice is still cold but when he turns back to look at Mike there’s something like satisfaction in his eyes.  Mike sits up a little bit straighter, and feels that bittersweet ache again that has nothing to do with bruises.  He’s happy, it shouldn’t feel like he’s trying not to cry.  “But they’re not willing to see that.  So first we have to take out those... _Burners._ ”

“I will, sir,” says Mike.  “I won’t let you down.”

Mister Kane watches him for a long second, and then turns away again.  

“...We’ll see,” he says.  “Brief yourself and report to Harley in Research and Development for a pre-mission test of your armor.  You won’t remove your helmet or communicate with anyone during missions except pre-approved Kane Co. employees.”

He can do that.  “Yessir.”

“Where do you belong?”

“I belong in Deluxe, sir.”

“And your enemy?”

“The Burners, sir.”  A sudden jolt of pain, too abrupt to pin down to any one place in his body--Mike winces, but thankfully Mister Kane’s back is turned and he doesn’t notice.  Mike straightens up a second later, forcing his shoulders back.

“...Very good, Commander,” says Mister Kane, and warmth obliterates the last traces of that strange, sourceless pain.  “Dismissed.”

\--

There are more ways down into Motorcity than Mike would have expected.  The one they’re taking today--in Red’s sleek, hard-faceted black vehicle--is close to the edge of Deluxe.  Through a maintenance hatch, past control panels and energy columns, and down a tightly-winding ramp into the darkness below.  Mike feels almost dizzy looking down at the night-sky canvas of the city below, but it’s not a bad feeling.

It’s almost...good.

\--No.  No, it hurts.  Mike stops thinking about that.

He’s trying not to think too hard about who’s sitting next to him, too.  It’s not that he’s afraid of Red, but being around the guy makes him jumpy.  He hasn’t forgotten what happened the last time they were in the same place.

He’s holding on to the door next to him as Red whips down the spiralling road; his hand finds a switch and he taps it idly with a finger and then jumps as the window next to him slides down and fills the inside of the vehicle with cold, rushing air.

 _“Hey!”_ snaps Red, but Mike is too preoccupied to listen right now.  Mister Kane told him never to take his helmet off in public, but part of him desperately wants to breathe in all the smells and see the colors below without his mask in the way.

 _“Happy to be home?”_ asks Red snidely, and Mike’s gut churns--with anger, right?  Definitely with anger.  He doesn’t like Red.

“I belong in Deluxe,” he says.  Rule three.  Red studies him, then snorts and jerks his head around to face front.

_“Pathetic.”_

Mike shrugs and goes back to the window.  “Whatever you say, man.”  Honestly, he’s too excited to be out doing Mister Kane’s work to care much about Red’s taunts.  And even through his helmet’s filters, there’s something invigoratingly damp and wild about the air here that makes him itch for action.  There’s so much _space_ below Deluxe, and wild, looping roads over the old buildings, uplit by neon.  He hardly notices when the map with the coordinates for their destination pops up, and only stops leaning out the window when Red pushes the controls on his side and the tinted glass begins to slide up again.

 _“Some professional you are,”_ Red mutters.

“Hey, I’m just as ready for me to be out of here as you are, man.”

Red’s hands tighten visibly on the wheel under his gloves, but he doesn’t answer, just floors the gas as they come out of the last curve onto a straight road.  The needle on the dash jumps to 300 miles per hour in under a minute, and Mike literally can’t stop himself from whooping as the world stretches and liquefies around them, the lights of Motorcity turning into multicolored streaks.

 _“Shut up!”_ barks Red, and Mike does, but he doesn’t stop grinning ear-to-ear under his mask.  His heart is pounding, thrumming, furious and alive in his chest.  He almost feels--

Oh--no--that doesn’t--

The grin drops a notch as his mind starts to spiral like the ramp they came down on, thoughts he can’t quite get a grip on clashing with the thoughts he knows he should be thinking--

Mike shuts it down.  Shakes his head.  Settles back in his seat, watching Motorcity blur past as Red navigates its backroads with violent twists of the wheel.  If he doesn’t think, maybe he can just enjoy this for a while.

It doesn’t last nearly as long as he thought--hoped--it would.  Red’s vehicle judders to a halt on the highway above a small, well-lit building, scarlet lights going dark.  It’s almost invisible like this.

 _“Well?”_ says Red sharply, _“What are you waiting for,_ Chilton _?”_

“Can you just take it easy for once, Red?”

_“No!”_

Mike shrugs and climbs out as silently as he can.  His feet have barely landed on the road when Red speeds away, the force of his acceleration slamming the passenger-side door shut.  Geez, thinks Mike.  What’s his problem?  If he wants to fight again, Mike’s more than ready to take him on this time.

The building is just an old motel, but Mike knows as soon as he gets there why he was asked to target this place.  The courtyard is full of men in black, numbered suits, looking over sleek black cars, hoods raised to show compact, glittering batteries of firepower.  Mike gets distracted for a minute--just a minute, just a couple of minutes, really--staring at the bared engines, the smooth outlines of the cars.  He knows why Mister Kane hates them, that they’re hurting this city, enabling its gangs, wreaking havoc on the streets, but they’re so nicely put together.  Elegant, terrifyingly-powerful machines.

And he’s going to get to _drive_ one.  Wow.

Mike taps his collar and sees the shimmer of Deluxe hologram-tech flicker down his arms.  It covers him in twilight grey--not Red’s vivid, hole-in-the-world black, not his Deluxe white and blue, but a faded, camouflage-gray-green that hides his allegiance and lets him blend in with the dimness around him.  Time to go make Mister Kane proud.

It’s almost too easy.  The guys on the ground are chatting, at ease, they’re not expecting him.  And even when the fastest ones catch up and start to pull guns from their coats (citizens just running around with guns, people under no authority shooting whoever they feel like shooting, and this would never happen in Deluxe where it’s safe and clean and everybody is cared for) Mike is on top of them already.  The lower the number, the faster they are, and the closer they come to hitting him--Mike sets his eyes on 23, 17, 10, the smallest numbers he can find, and fights.

Letting loose feels great.  Mike takes down more of them than he means to, ducking behind their precious cars whenever somebody pulls a gun, dodging and weaving and never in the same place long enough to hit.  He’s on fire _,_ he’s been lying around for too long and the adrenaline rush is lighting him up from the inside and--

_You have your mission, Commander._

\--and that’s enough.  Time to do what he was sent down here to do.  Mike glances around, scans the courtyard through the faint white haze of his tinted visor, and spots a car that looks like it might belong to “10”, who’s on the ground and groaning now.  It’ll do.  

\--

Driving is _amazing._

It was part of his briefing before leaving Deluxe, and watching Red drive he could almost feel how it would work, how the car would turn and accelerate and drift, perfectly under his control.  Driving an actual car is _even better._  

“ _How, um…_ ”  Harley’s voice crackles into his helmet comm as Mike takes a curve too sharp and too fast, grinning like a maniac.  The gang members in their black cars vanished from his rear-view mirror a long time ago.

 “... _How are you doing down there, Commander?_   _You’re about ten minutes out from your extraction point.”_

“You don’t have to call me ‘Commander’, Alex” says Mike, and glances down at the map on his screen.  He forgot to check it--he’s still on course, though.  It seems pretty obvious which way he needs to go, even if the roads are pretty rough and winding.  Intuitive, almost familiar.

“ _Commander, I didn’t give you that radio for_ small talk _.”_ Mister Kane’s voice is harsh and close in his ear--Mike jumps.  “ _And I gave you that rank for a reason!_ ”

Shoot.  “Sorry, Mister Kane.  Eight minutes.”  And then, irrepressible, “...bet I can do it in five, though.”

Mister Kane doesn’t answer.  His comm flicks offline.  Mike sits back, grin fading.

“...Eight minutes, Commander Harley,” he says, and wishes he could take his helmet off for a second.  His head hurts, all of a sudden, sharp and pounding behind one eye.  “I’ll...I’ll report back in when I’m ready for extraction.”

“ _Acknowledged._ ”  Harley sounds glad to get an excuse to hang up.  “ _Harley out._ ”

Mike follows the projected route and speed, and almost exactly eight minutes later he makes it to the hiding place.  The extraction point is in front of a half-collapsed building; Mister Kane’s drones have pulled an ancient, rusted garage door off a long-unused garage, leaving a perfect hiding place for Mike’s stolen car.  He spins the wheel and backs effortlessly into the listing, dust-filled garage.  Backed far enough into the shadows, the car is almost completely invisible when Mike hops out and jogs back out of the garage, reaching up to his comm.

“Commander Harley?”

“ _Yes?_ ”

“Ready for extraction.”

“ _Oh._ ”  Harley sounds distracted.  “ _Actually Commander, we’re going to need to take one last precaution before you come back up._ ”

That’s... _bad,_ of course.  Staying down here and not going back up to Deluxe is a bad thing.  Of course.  

Mike still has to resist the urge to pump a fist in the air.  

“Go ahead.”

“ _We’re picking up a signal from the car you’re driving, broadcasting to a non-Deluxian frequency,_ ” says Harley.  “ _We think it’s a tracking beacon.  We need you to remove it, and dispose of it somewhere else so the owners can’t retrieve the vehicle.  You’ll need it for phase two._ ”

“Roger that,” says Mike, hopping out of the Buick-- _car_ , man, what’s wrong with him?  Buick.  That’s not even a word.  He pats the car once as he steps away, like _you did a good job_.  It’s stupid, but hey.  Who’s watching?

_“Commander?”_

“Present,” says Mike, feeling under the hood for a latch.  Aha.  It pops up, revealing a twisting array of pipes and metallic casing.  Mike’s heart does that weird thrumming thing again.  It hurts, but just a little.

_“What are you doing?”_

“Finding the beacon,” says Mike.  That’s what he was told to do.  This isn’t hard to understand.

 _“...Right,”_ says Harley uneasily.   _“You don’t want...any further information about_ how _to find it?”_

“Oh.”  Mike pauses, tilting his head on one side.  He guesses Harley just doesn’t want to feel left out.  Well, Mike gets that.  “It’d help to know what it looks like,” he concedes, and grins at the relief in Harley’s voice when he comes back on the comm.

_“Alright, here you go.”_

The beacon is a little metal box, buried behind the engine.  Harley walks him through the necessary procedure to get it out, but Mike doesn’t really need his help.  It all fits together so easily, it all makes sense.  This part driving that, turning gears and spinning belts. And then he’s holding the beacon in his hands, turning it over, feeling a faint hum under his fingertips.  

“ _You’ll need to take that away from the car on foot,”_ Harley says in Mike’s ear, “ _as far from the hiding place as you can get it.  And then break it._ ”

“Got it,” says Mike.  “Easy as pie.”

 _“...Right,”_ says Harley slowly.   _“Pi.”_

Mike laughs and starts running, and doesn’t think about where he heard the saying or what pie is.  The ground here is so uneven, nothing like the perfectly flat surfaces in Deluxe.  Mike only trips once before he learns to be conscious of every step, anticipating any shift or obstacle.   _As far from the hiding place as you can get it._ Mike vaults a section of wall with a loud, exhilarated yell, skids down a crooked, toppled chunk of concrete and lands lightly at the bottom.

“ _Commander?_ ”

“Huh?!”  The adrenaline is pounding through him and it feels _great_ but oh yeah, oops, he might have just yelled in Harley’s ear.  “Sorry Alex!”

“ _It’s...Commander Harley,_ ” says Alex, sounding kind of pained.

“Cool, sorry!”  Distantly, the sound of screeching wheels.  Somebody is coming his way, fast.  Mike veers sharply left, into narrow alleys too close to fit a car through, toward the distant glow of something bright and colorful--neon.  Neon lights.  That’s what they’re called, heard that somewhere, antiquated lighting system ( _vivid and brilliant and alive_ ).  Mike vaults a dumpster overflowing with trash, almost lands on a lady on the other side who’s wrapped up and sleeping in a bunch of newspapers.  Stumbles and rolls onto his feet with a breathless laugh.  “They’re following me.  I’m gonna try to throw them off.”

“ _No!_ ”  Harley sounds startled.  “ _What?  No, you can’t_ ‘throw off’ _pursuit vehicles on foot, just find a place to destroy the beacon!_ ”

“Not far enough yet,” says Mike, and swings around a corner into a street full of lit windows and signs.  People are sitting on steps and in doorways, talking or walking or carrying bags--they don’t seem to notice him as he passes, cloaked in his nondescript grey-green hologram.  In the distance, the sound of roaring engines is getting louder.  “Send a bot to my location.”

“ _What?”_

“Just a basic enforcer drone, send one to my location!”

 _“Why?”_  Harley sounds suspicious, which Mike finds a little hurtful.

“It’s a _surprise_ ,” he says, joking, and then, when Harley doesn’t answer, “Alright-- _whoops_ \--”

_“What?  What?!”_

“Just a plasma bolt,” says Mike.  “No big deal.”

Harley makes a strangled noise and Mike thinks he might hear the sound of clicking keys for a moment before his voice cuts back in.   _“There’s a bot near your coordinates and I’m sending it your way!  You’d better know what you’re doing, M--Chil--_ Commander!”

Mike grins.  “Ten-four, Commander!”

Harley remains unamused.   _“They’re firing on you?  They must have heat-seeking equipment or--wait, if they can pinpoint the beacon’s exact location--”_

“Mind putting a pin in that thought for now, bro?” asks Mike, grunting as he turns another tight corner and slips through the back door of a small, grimy building.  A smell, something greasy and savory, filters faintly into his helmet, but he doesn’t have time to stop and identify it.

 _“Where_ are _you_?” Harley yells frantically.   _“The bot can’t get to you!”_

“There’s another door,” Mike mutters, peering through the back of the little kitchen he’s ended up in.  “I’ll meet it on the other side of the building.”

_“I have no idea what you’re doing but okay.”_

A thickset man with flour all over his front turns around as Mike makes a mad dash through the kitchen, but he’s not fast enough to catch more than a glimpse of a camouflaged shadow.  Mike bursts through the other door and slams right into the enforcer drone, instinctively wrapping his arms around it as his momentum carries them a few feet.

“Here, buddy!” he says, slapping the beacon against one of its magnetized forelimbs.

 _“Did you just call a bot_ buddy _?”_

“He’s helpin’ me out,” says Mike, patting the top of the bot’s chassis.  It doesn’t feel quite the same.  As.  Something.

 _“I_ told _it to,”_ Harley points out, sounding strained.

“Oh,” says Mike.  “Good point!  Thanks, buddy!”

_“It’s Commander H--oh, just keep moving!  I’ll direct the drone to stay low to the ground and then run it into a wall or something.  That should be enough to damage the beacon.”_

“Into a _wall_?”  A little pang of sadness goes through Mike even as the sound of men shouting registers in his helmet speakers.  The bot starts whirring away down a little side-road.  It hurts.  “That’s pretty rough.”

 _“Just a bot,”_ says Harley.   _“Move?  Please?”_

“On it.”

There are voices beyond his cover--normal citizens making conversation--but beyond them, Mike’s sure he can hear shouting.  Men’s voices.  It could just be a harmless commotion...or it could be gang members following the beacon of a stolen car.

Mike edges closer to the opening of the alley, trying to gauge his chances of getting out this way.  There’s a cluster of chattering people between him and the safety of the next alley.  Not ideal, but most of them only have eyes for some kind of street performance outside the restaurant, a group of dancers taking turns to show off their moves on a cardboard mat.  

Mike hops from foot to foot, waiting for his moment, glancing occasionally at the closest intersection as the shouting grows closer and closer.  He sprints across the road as an especially loud _“ooh!”_ rises from the audience, skirting streetlights and pedestrians and diving between two ancient buildings just as men in black suits swing around the corner.  

The suits storm through the crowd, yelling orders, guns drawn, pouring into the alley Mike just left.  Mike grabs an ancient, rusted-out fire escape and swings himself up onto the landing, flattening himself into the shadow of the doorway.  He’d fight them all if he could-- _scaring innocent people like that_ \--but these are his orders.  Don’t let yourself be seen.

The first thing he notices as he climbs cautiously down, listening with all his concentration, is that the shouting is fading.  Harley has helpfully provided him with a map, and the signal of the unfortunate bot is fading into the distance.  

The second thing he notices is that somebody’s crying.

It’s a little girl.  One of the men chasing Mike must have knocked her over as they pushed through the crowd, and she’s got bloody knees and a scraped elbow.  Mike hesitates, torn, and then sighs and edges out of the shadows, picking his way down the rusty stairs.  The girl whips around at the sound of footsteps, and when she sees him her eyes widen in obvious fear; Mike holds up his hands, open and soothing, and then holds up a finger in front of his mask.   _Shhh don’t worry not gonna hurt you._

She still doesn’t look happy, and Mike wishes he could take his helmet off and smile at her but that’s completely against orders.  He pats her head carefully instead, and reaches into his emergency first-aid kit for two of his skin-bonds.

“Are you in a gang?”  

She sounds scared.  Mike grits his teeth, thinking of all those dark suits, those hidden guns, and shakes his head.  

“Dad says not to go near the Skylarks.  He says there’s gonna be trouble.”

Mike nods and holds up the skin-bond, showing her how to peel off the backing.  Then he points to her knee and holds it out.

She reaches out shakily, and it hurts.  She’s scared of him still.  Mike wants to tell her _it’s okay I’m a good guy,_ but he can’t.  He helps her put it on, careful not to move too fast or press it down too hard--that should be okay.  She won’t get infected or anything now, at least.

“ _Commander Chilton, report in._ ”

Oh!  A loophole!

“It’s okay,” says Mike, half to Harley, half to the little girl.  Knowingly twisting his orders like that makes his head ache and throb, but it’s worth it.  

 _“That’s good,”_ says Harley helplessly.   _“The bot won’t last long, though, you need to get out of here.”_

“Are you alright?” says Mike.  This is stretching it.  It hurts.  It’s worth it.  “Do you need any help?”

_“Do I--what?  I’m completely...safe?”_

The girl still looks a little nervous--probably because of that thing his helmet does to his voice--but upon inspecting the skin-bonds she seems satisfied that they’re not going to hurt her.

“I need to find my family,” she says, glancing back at the crowd.

“That sounds good,” says Mike.  The girl nods.

“...I can do it on my own,” she says firmly.  “But thanks.”

Mike just nods, because there’s no way he can fit a _You’re welcome_ into his conversation with Harley.

And speaking of…  

 _“Commander,_ ” Harley says, tight and worried again.  “ _Mister Kane told you to follow my orders.  Confirm.”_

“Confirmed,” says Mike, starting to climb the old fire escape again.  He’s pretty sure it’ll be easier to go over the rooftops than through that crowd.  He glances back, and the little girl gives him a slightly tentative wave before walking out into the neon light.  Good.  Good, she’s safe.

 _“Repeat the oath,”_ says Harley.  

Okay.  This one’s easy.

“I solemnly swear loyalty...to Deluxe-- _oof_ \--and to-- _hff_ \--defend it at--”

_“What are you doing?”_

“I’m on the move!” says Mike, and springs, free-falling from the edge of one roof to another.  Roll, throw the momentum _forward_ \--  ” _Whoo!_ You never told me to stop moving, so...uh-- _at any cost_.  To forever wage battle against its--”

 _“Okay,”_ says Harley.   _“Okay...well...fine.  That’s enough, Commander.  Just don’t...draw too much attention to yourself?  Please?”_

Mike wonders whether talking to the girl was “too much”.  Probably not, he thinks.  It was only a little attention, from a little kid.  It’s fine.  He doesn’t have to ask Harley.  Harley seems like the kind of dude who worries about stuff even if it’s not a big deal, like Chuck, so telling him will just make him worry.

Now...back to the extraction point.

Red is there waiting when he arrives, standing by his car...thing… and frowning.  Mike’s not sure how he can tell, but there’s definitely something frown-ish about the way Red looks at him when Mike climbs up onto the road and jogs over.

“ _What took you so long._ ”

“I was busy!”  Mike attempts a friendly punch on the shoulder; Red bristles like a furious cat, tensing up all over, fists rising.  “--whoa, okay, sorry dude!”

“ _Shut up and get in the car,_ ” Red says, flat and bitter.  Mike shuts up and gets in the car.

\--

Harley and Mister Kane are both waiting when Mike finally gets back to the tower.  He salutes and finally pulls off his helmet--jeez, he didn’t realize how sweaty he was getting under there until he took it off.  He shakes out his damp hair, tucks the helmet under one arm and grins at them.  

“Nice to be back, sir!”

“ _I’m leaving,_ ” says Red, and stalks away--a little bit over-dramatically in Mike’s opinion.  Well, when is Red not dramatic.  

“You completed your mission.”

“Yessir!”  And it was _great._  Mike feels _great_ , and Mister Kane is great, and Deluxe is great, and Motorcity is--no, never mind.  Never mind, don’t.  “I could do another one, sir!  Feels good to be back in the field!”

“...Well done, Commander,” says Mister Kane.

The warm feeling that faltered when Mike started to think about Motorcity swells up again, overwhelming.  Wow, he feels _so good_.  Having Mister Kane pleased with him is just about the best thing ever in the history of things happening.

“Is there anything else I can do tonight, sir?”

“Commander Harley is going to check your equipment,” says Mister Kane.  “Then you’ll leave him your suit and go straight to your pod.  Your next briefing will be at eight tomorrow morning.  Dismissed.”

Okay.  Okay, that was...shorter than Mike was hoping for, and he’s really not in the mood for a tech-check (or bed, for that matter) but whatever Kane Co. needs from him!  That’s fine, it’s cool.

Mike stays on top of the world for the entire walk down to R&D, grinning so wide his cheeks hurt, walking with a bounce in his step, floating on leftover adrenaline and the exhilaration of Mister Kane’s approval.  He’s down to the lab and most of the way out of his suit by the time Harley catches up with him, snatching his tools up off his work-station.

“No physical damage while you were down there?”  He grabs the suit as Mike steps out of it--the air feels frigid after spending so long under the bulky material of the suit.  Mike shakes the shivers out, savoring the rush of cold, then snatches up his uniform pants--they’re where he left them, but someone folded them while he was gone--and pulls them on over his shorts.  The shirt can wait--wow, he _really_ needs a shower.

“Stand--stand still a minute.”  Harley is trying to get at the back of his neck.  The implant.  Mike goes still immediately.  The implant is the most important thing, and it can’t get damaged.  He’s got to let Harley work on it, not move.  If Harley messes up, Mike won’t be able to get Mister Kane’s orders anymore.  The most important thing.

“Alright,” says Harley, in that quiet, close way people focusing on something very small have.  “This looks fine, but give me another second here...  I might add some extra plating to the neck of the suit.  And you need something long-range--”

“What, like Red’s got?” says Mike, and Harley pauses.

“...’Red’?  The other guy in armor, that’s what you call him?”

“Just seemed right,” says Mike, almost shrugging but catching himself.  Don’t move.

“Well...yeah.”  Harley goes back to work, making minute adjustments.  “...Like Red.  He’s got this lightning stuff he uses--”

“Oh, yeah,” says Mike.  He knows about that stuff.  He saw it when--he saw--

Oh, no.

“It hurts,” says Mike, out loud for the first time.  Maybe because there’s someone there with him, and it’s not Mister Kane, who doesn’t want to hear that it hurts.  “ _Ah_ , wow.  It hurts.”

Harley stops again and steps away, peering around Mike to make eye contact.  His forehead is creased.  “Your neck?  Your neck hurts?”

“No, just--”  Mike pulls a face, trying to put it into words.  “You’re--right--I mean, I couldn’t have seen, he wasn’t allowed, Mister Kane’s orders--”

Harley’s blue eyes go wide.  For a second, he and Mike stare at each other, both looking panicky.  And then realization flashes across Harley’s face and he relaxes.  “No, he wasn’t allowed, but he did it anyway.  Remember?  He was about to use it on you before Mister Kane stopped him.”

Everything snaps back into place.  “Right,” says Mike, relieved.  “I saw it.  That time, I saw it then.”  That’s right, and it hurts to think about somebody refusing Mister Kane’s orders but at least he knows where the memory is from now.  Knowing that is okay.  He can--he’s allowed to…

Mostly to distract himself, he says, “So, did you design his stuff too?”

“Huh?  Oh.  No, that was...before my time here.  Uh.  And anyway, I think he made it himself.  Kane Co. upgraded it--”

“I bet he loved having Kane Co. trick out his gear,” Mike says, half-laughing.  Harley laughs too, short and confused.

“...’tricked’...?” He repeats, and then shakes his head and picks up Mike’s suit again.  “Anyway.  We didn’t come up with his electrical equipment.  That was all him.”

“Wow,” Mike marvels.  “Pretty cool.  I mean, he’s a jerk, but…”

Harley laughs again, for real this time, leaning over his workstation to spread out the blue suit on the desk.  “Yeah, he’s...really a piece of work.”

There’s a long silence, during which Harley settles down to work and Mike stands awkwardly to one side, watching him.  He’s not sure Harley even remembers he’s there, inputting commands for the 3d printer to his left and pulling up at least ten different windows with blueprints and circuit boards spread across them.

Mike has been standing there for almost fifteen minutes when Harley looks up to take a new component off of the printer, sees him standing there and startles so hard he almost drops it.  “Ww _why--?!_  Wh-why are you still here?!”  The first word breaks into a squawk--Mike thinks fondly of Chuck again and resists the urge to pat Harley on the shoulder or anything.  Dude’s jumpy.  He might not like that.

“What should I do?”

“I’m--this isn’t going to be done tonight.”  Harley looks down at his scattered components and grimaces.  “...I mean, an all-nighter--maybe.  We’ll see.  Look, the point is, you can’t just stand here and watch me make it.  Go...go do whatever you do.  Didn’t Mister Kane tell you to go to your pod once we were done with the check?”

“Oh.”  Mike’s contented smile falls a little bit.  He doesn’t really _want_ to go to his pod right now.  He wants to go work out, maybe, or find somebody to spar, or _(drive_ ) or--

He’ll go to his pod.  He’ll follow his orders.  Maybe if he does sleep, this stupid headache will ease off.

“Okay,” says Mike, and waves as he turns away.  “See you tomorrow, Alex.”

“See--!  S-see you tomorrow.”  Harley stumbles over the words like he’s startled by them.  Mike laughs to himself, throws his shirt and jacket over his arm and heads off to his pod to take a shower.

\--

The next day he’s down in Motorcity again, and yet again Red leaves as soon as he’s given Mike the coordinates for the next target.  It’s clear he’s supremely displeased by his role of glorified pathfinder, and normally Mike would get that and try to help him out, but Red really does rub him the wrong way.  He stares after Red’s car for a long second, then shakes his head and starts off into the dark.

It’s a short jog to the place where he finished his last mission, shorter without Red complaining and growling in his ear the whole time.  Mike ducks into the old, half-collapsed garage and looks the stolen car over, searching for any sign of the hiding place being disturbed--nope.  Looks like the decoy-bot really did its job.

“The car’s intact,” he says.  “I’m heading out.”

“ _Right._ ”  Harley sounds distracted.  “ _Hold still for a second first.  I’m running diagnostics on your new upgrades.  Wanted to do it before you left, but Mister K--I mean, there wasn’t time, so--_ ”

“Oh, you finished those?”  Mike looks down at his arms, turning them over; whatever Harley’s doing up in Deluxe, it’s sending shivering little waves of something like static electricity flowing up his arms, making them prickle like the hair’s standing on end.  His gloves start to glow with brilliant, Deluxe-blue light.  “Man you work fast.  Did you sleep last night?”

“ _Mm?_ ”  Harley sounds distracted.  The light on Mike’s gloves stutters.  “... _Shoot.  One second._ ”

“I said, ‘did you sleep last night?’” Mike repeats, and not for the first time, worries the same thing about Chuck.  But he’s not allowed to talk to Chuck, and Harley’s right here and not sleeping.  Might as well take care of one of them, right?  “Alex--dude, you gotta take care of yourself.”

“ _Uh-huh,_ ” says Harley distantly.  The glow comes back on, and this time it stays.  “... _Okay.  This is what I got done--it’s a prototype, but my tests last night looked promising._ ”

 _“_ Awesome.”  Mike flexes his fingers.  “...what is it?”

 _“It’s a percussive shockwave.  You activate it by pressing the knuckles of both gloves together--but!”_ Harley has no way of seeing Mike’s raised, glowing hands, or anticipatory grin, but maybe he knows Mike well enough to guess by now!  He’s a funny guy.  Mike’s glad Mister Kane put him in charge of Mike’s tech for this mission.  

“ _The shockwave isn’t directional,_ ” Harley says.  “ _You’re gonna have to stabilize yourself somehow.  The longer you let it charge, the stronger the discharge will be._ ”

“Got it,” says Mike.  “Thanks, Commander.”  And then, irrepressible, “So...can I try out my new toys now?”

A staticky sigh.  “... _Yes, you can try it out.  Take it away from the car, okay?  We’re both in trouble if the car gets damaged._ ”

Took him long enough to unwind!  They’re both commanders, after all, working for Mister Kane, doing their best for Deluxe, they should be on good terms.

Mike braces his back foot on a cinderblock, wiggles his fingers and clenches both hands into fists--

The impact of his knuckles slamming together almost blows him off his feet.  The entire trash-heap trembles, and in a nearby abandoned building, windows shatter and rain down glittering shards of glass.  

“ _Whoa,_ ” says Mike, dizzy with aftershocks, and laughs.  “Whoa!”

“ _Pretty cool, right?_ ”  There’s a barely-stifled smile in Harley’s voice.  

“Uh, _yeah?_ ”  Mike braces and slams his knuckles together again--the shockwave isn’t nearly as strong this time, but it still makes the ground tremble.  “Haha!  Dude, this is awesome!  Did--”

“ _What’s the hold-up, Commander Chilton._ ”

Mister Kane.  Mike straightens up immediately, guiltily standing to attention even though he knows Mister Kane can’t actually see him.  There’s a slow prickle on his arms as the gloves start to recharge.

“Sorry sir!  On my way now.”

A new day, a new target.  Away from the edges of the city, on high roads over deep canyons of trash with sluggish streams at the bottom, through winding junkyard paths.  Mike drives a little more carefully this time--Mister Kane is following this mission personally, and that means it’s important.  He has to do this right, and maybe if he does Mister Kane will tell him he did a good job again.  That’s the best thing.  He focuses on that, and the thought keeps him going until the target comes into view and Mike immediately loses his train of thought.  Holy crap, who does _this_ hot mess belong to?

The new target is a mansion on a hill, lit up and glowing like Deluxe at noon, all red and gold.  It feels...familiar, somehow, like there’s something about this he should remember or recognize, but he would _definitely_ remember being here before.  Golden stars, spotlights, and what the heck is with that logo on the front of the building?  That’s...what, a giant golden “D”?

 _Would it look better if it was a giant red “K”_? Snipes the irreverent part of his brain, and Mike stomps that thought down, breathing through the sharp throb of pain the insubordination sends through his skull.  At least whatever happens in his own head is in his own head.  Mister Kane doesn’t have to know he sometimes--

“ _Do you see it now?”_

Mike jerks to attention.  “Sir!?”

“ _You saw them huddling like rats down there on their trash heaps,_ ” says Mister Kane, and Mike watches from his place in the shadows as a gleaming limousine pulls slowly out of the yard, winding down the long path down the mountain.  “ _While lowlifes like these live in mansions, and they call it_ freedom _.  Do you think that’s fair, Commander?_ ”

“No, sir.”  Old men, young women, kids, _citizens_ flinching when he rolled past in his stolen car.  Somebody has to protect them.  Deluxe has to beat these psychopaths back for them.  If they won’t come up into the light, then this is all Mike can do.  

He watches the limo cruise down the road and feels his fists clench so hard his bones creak.  

“ _Well then.  Go teach him a lesson._ ”

Mike is more than happy to.

There are a lot of ways to _destroy_ things in Motorcity.  Mike knows from Mister Kane’s lessons that this is because cars are dangerous, Motorcity is dangerous, weapons in the wrong hands are _dangerous_.  But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love the first idea that pops into his head, which is to charge the black car right at the front doors of the mansion at 200 miles per hour, lock the gas pedal, and bail out before the collision.

People see him coming this time; Mike hits his camouflage again and dives out of the driver’s-side door at the very last second, head down as the force of the explosion behind him hits his eardrums like a physical blow.  People yell--more gunshots, but they’re all aimed at the wrecked mess of the car, not at Mike.

Mike is expecting to have plenty of time after that crash to get away from the wreckage and into the clear, but he’s only about fifty feet away from the new, smoking hole in the wall of the mansion when a voice behind him shouts “ _Leave it!  Driver’s gone.  Spread out, ya mooks!”_

Shoot, these guys are faster on the uptake than he figured.  Mike reaches for his staff--

Mike shakes his head hard, clenches his fists and feels the static crawl of his gloves powering up.  The mansion is in the middle of a confusing jumble of trash-heaps and broken-down car-frames, more treacherous and harder to navigate than the cityscape he ran through last time.  Mike keeps his eyes on his feet and runs, dodging and weaving as yelling voices dog his footsteps.

He’s clear of the trash and well on his way toward the neon lights of the city center when he hears the guttural, grinding sound of an _enormous_ motor revving to life, echoing out across the deserted roads like distant thunder.  Light streams through the trash-heaps, throwing long shadows out across the ground toward the city.

Mike only glances back once, during that headlong rush toward the cover of the city limits; he sees a gargantuan monster of a vehicle, as tall as a building--an enormous honest-to-god old-fashioned _tank_.  He doesn’t look back after that.  Just grits his teeth and runs faster.

And he’s fast, but the tank’s massive treads carry it easily over the rough, jumbled mountains of scrap metal.  It moves as the crow flies, indiscriminate of obstacles.  It’s right on his tail, headlights catching his heels, when Mike throws himself gratefully past the first few shacks on the outskirts of the city.  Behind him, there’s a heavy scream of what must be the largest braking system in Motorcity, and Mike knows he’s safe.  He ducks behind an empty building just in case, heaving breaths hot inside his helmet, one eye still fixed on the immense shape in the distance.   _Good job, Commander Chilton_.

“Who’s there?”

Mike freezes for a split second, and then whips around and sees a guy staring at him.  He looks older than Mike, maybe forty or fifty, with dark blue hair shaved into a mohawk that would easily be worth a couple of mandated re-education sessions in Deluxe.  Slowly, Mike starts to back away from him, trying to think of how to make a casual getaway.

Then movement catches the corner of his eye and he looks back around in time to see the tank’s barrel swing around with ominous slowness.  There’s a flash and a _bang_ and a long, empty moment filled only by a faint sound of something whistling through the air above.

Then a full-size _limousine_ goes right through the building next to Mike and smashes into the street.

The next couple of seconds don’t involve any conscious thought on Mike’s part, just a series of impressions and actions.   _Building’s going to come down--Run--But the guy--He’ll_ die _\--Run run run run--_

Mike throws himself forward and tackles the man off his feet.  The suit is engineered to dull impact, but Mike can still feel rubble slam against his back and shoulders with bruising force.  The man hits the ground hard and immediately reaches down to his leg--he’s already bleeding.  There’s no way he can run fast enough to get away, and Mike’s not sure he can carry him.  The best he can do is provide shelter.  Mike braces himself on shaking arms, grits his teeth around a yell of pain as another chunk of stone slams into his hip, but refuses to move.  

It takes a long time for the shaking and rumbling to die away.  Mike forces himself to breathe evenly through the pain in his back and ribs, tasting grit even through his mask’s filters.

“You…”

It’s the man.  Mike shifts and then groans before he can stop himself--that _hurts,_ holy crap.

“You saved me.”

Mike wants to say _it was the least I could do._  Wants to say _are you okay?_  All he can do instead is groan again and push himself up, falling back against one of the scattered chunks of concrete and twisted metal that barely missed him.  Yeah, those are definitely cracked ribs.  Gotta be.  Jeez, who _breaks a building_?  Even a condemned--

_There are still people inside!_

For a second, there’s a throb of pain so strong he can’t breathe, can’t see, can’t _think_.  Then he’s blinking, dazed, back in his head.  The white fog that lingers around the edges of his thoughts is amazingly comforting and he closes his eyes and tries to rest, sinking into it.  

“Are you hurt?”  

Mike blinks back to reality and looks down, trying to remember what was happening.  The man is still staring at him, looking like he can’t decide whether to help Mike up or run away.  Mike waves a hand as airily as he can but it can’t be all that convincing, especially since when he lifts his arm his whole side throbs and he can’t help but wince.  “--there’s a doctor on the other side of town, I can get--”

No.

Mike shakes his head and pushes himself up. The building is in wreckage around him, and he thinks of Red suddenly, strangely, with a pang of something more like pain than anger.  Sadness?  Why would that jerk make him sad?

He doesn’t remember.  Doesn’t remember it hurts he doesn’t remember.  It’s not important.

“I’m okay,” he gets out--it’s allowed, communications with base, he’s supposed to report in--and sees the man’s eyes widen nervously at the sound of his garbled voice even as Alex’s voice says “ _What do you mean, ‘okay’?  What happened?  You’re not at the extraction point._ ”

“I’m hurt, but I’m--okay,” says Mike--well, _okay_ is a strong word, but the guy he saved looks a little bit better.  

“Who _are_ you?”  The guy is sort of...slowly advancing on him, trying to get a look through his camouflaged mask.  Mike takes a couple of painful steps back, feeling new bruises already setting into his back and sides.  “Where are you goin’?”

“On my way,” Mike says, but he can feel his orders pushing at his brain, he knows he’s not really talking to Harley and it _hurts._  “Leaving.  Extraction.”

“ _Is your suit compromised?_ ”

Trust Harley.  Mike lets out a hoarse noise that would’ve been a laugh if he had enough breath to finish it, and starts jogging toward the distant glowing beacon of his extraction point on his visor display.  

“Nothing we can’t fix.”

“Hey!”  The guy is trying to follow him--Mike grits his teeth, forces air into his burning lungs and picks up the pace.  “Hey, where you goin’?!  Who--”

Mike puts his head down and runs.

He makes it all the way to the extraction point without being seen again.  As reckless and dangerous as it was for the driver of that tank to fire at a residential area like that, it has at least had the effect of clearing off the streets.  Everybody is inside, where nobody would hurt them.  The buildings won’t come down.  The buildings will stay full and safe _unless Mister Kane orders--_ they’re inside, away from danger.

He makes it to his destination without being seen, even though every step feels a little bit like dying.  

His extraction point is an ancient bridge, concrete and iron instead of polymers, with buildings crumbled and fallen on either side of it.  Mike sits gratefully, radios in and then slumps and takes deep, deep breaths.  It takes a while for his brain to calm back down, for the painful thoughts to sink back away again into white fog.

He’s only been resting a minute before the headlights appear.  Mike gets slowly to his feet, eyeing the white shafts of light as they slice through the fog.  He thought for a moment it was Red, but the lights are the wrong color...  More gang members?  At least they aren’t trying to run him over…and who knows if they’ll even see him with his camouflage--

In the moment that Mike remembers he deactivated his camouflage when he sat down to rest, one of the drivers seems to rethink their not-running-over-Mike policy and comes charging right at him.   _Really?_ Thinks Mike, and jumps straight up in the air.  It’s half luck, half natural Chilton athleticism that he manages to come down right on the hood of the car.  It’s a really nice one, Mike thinks vaguely as his muscles burn and the car weaves like a bronco trying to throw off its rider.  He hasn’t seen anything like it since he started coming down to Motorcity.  The driver makes it spin-- _such_ a cool move--but it’s actually easier for Mike to keep his grip now than it was when they were throwing him back and forth, so bummer for them, really.

And now here’s another car, sleek white and purple, swerving around the other one in a perfect hairpin turn.  But there’s no time to admire it--some kind of tail-like fixture on its rear bumper whips around and sends a slice of purple energy flying toward Mike’s knees.  Mike hops over it like a kid playing jump-rope and thinks, _This is getting old_.  Seeing these particular cars has filled him with a weird, new sort of delight, but he doesn’t have time to examine that now and he is _tired_ of fighting people in cars.  Everyone has cars down here!  It’s not fair--it’s--

He shakes off the instant’s uncertainty and swings himself around the side of the boxy red-and-black car, driving his foot through one of its windows.  The guy inside shouts and tries to kick him back, but there’s not a lot of room inside and Mike is faster than him.

The car is still moving as Mike pulls its driver through the broken window, leaning away from his awkward flailing.  For a couple of seconds everything is struggling and rushing air and screeching tires--then the car skids to a stop and the driver launches himself out of the broken window and head-butts Mike square in the stomach and _awesome_ , this is so much better than fist-fighting against cars.

Somebody calls him “Blue”, at some point.  Mike is too busy fighting to think about how that’s somehow funny, but painful but _seriously Dutch--_ the feeling doesn’t make any sense, so he dismisses it.  The guy who tried to run Mike over has some kind of guns in his hands, firing off bright neon blasts in Mike’s direction; Mike dodges and spins, but they’re closing in on him--

He clenches his fists to block a wild punch from the tall, skinny guy in purple, and feels the static prickling his arms.

The blast wins him plenty of breathing room--he hasn’t used it since the start of the mission, and it’s charged up strong enough it blasts the guy in purple off his feet and makes the bridge shake.  Mike is just taking a second to breathe, arms spread, feeling adrenaline pound through him, when something hits him right in the face.

Mike is just about to take out the sniper--seriously, come on, at least come down and fight one-on-one--and then he kind of...isn’t.

Air, _pain,_ air, ground, _pain._  Roaring engines, and Mike thinks blearily _they’re gonna run me over_.  But nobody does.  Somebody is yelling.  Mike’s leg might be broken.  He stands up anyway, fists up, ready to fight _for Deluxe and Mister Kane, for Deluxe for Deluxe wait don’t leave me here I belong in Deluxe I belong to--_

He can barely stand, let alone run after the neon blurs of their taillights, and the next second the cars are gone in a choking cloud of smoke.

\--

Mike has just enough time, waiting for his pickup, to get unbelievably stiff and sore and tired.  The adrenaline from the fight has faded, and even the comforting thought of being back in Deluxe, in his pod where he doesn’t have to think any more, doesn’t completely dull the pain.  The drive back passes in a blur of pain and confused thoughts as Mike takes deep breaths and tries to sink back into Deluxe white, quiet and calm.

He briefs Mister Kane, who seems pleased but still distant, and Mike hardly has the energy to wonder what he’s doing wrong this time.  Harley helps him with his suit, tutting over the damaged plating and oily scuffs.  Mike sits down while he gets the lower half peeled away, grateful for the chance to finally take the weight off his feet.  He even closes his eyes for a moment, before Harley does a loud, choking double-take as Mike’s injured knee comes into view.  The bruising has gotten truly impressive in the time since Mike’s fight, which kind of explains the horrified face Harley’s making.

“Hey, now we match, huh?” says Mike weakly, trying to lighten the mood a little.

“What--”  Harley clears his throat, pulling the rumpled suit to his chest.  “What...happened?”

“Car,” says Mike, wincing gently as he tries flexing the leg in question.  “Ow ow ow…”

Harley looks kind of sick.  “Somebody hit you with...one of those big, clunky...things?”

“Hey, they’re not so bad,” says Mike mildly.  Harley shoots him one of those weird, suspicious looks he gives sometimes.  Mike never knows what that’s about, so he just shrugs and tries to stand up again.  His leg buckles immediately.  Harley twitches forward like he doesn’t know whether to catch Mike or not.  Which--that’s cool of him, but Mike is totally--.

“-- _Fine,_ ” Mike gasps, clutching his knee.  “I’m fine!  Whew, that hit was a real doozy, I guess!”

“You should go get medical attention,” says Harley firmly.  “I put every kind of shock-absorption I could think of in your suit, but those things are barbaric.  You could have a broken leg!”

Mike frowns.  “Mister Kane didn’t say anything about--”

“Yeah, well--” Harley starts, squaring his shoulders suddenly--after a tense, frozen moment he relaxes, lowers his voice.  “He didn’t...say _not_ to either.  You should, uh, get patched up.  For your next mission.”

That makes sense.  Mike salutes, grinning crookedly through his bruises, and says, “Yes _sir_ Commander Alex!”

Harley stares at him, mouth half-slack, then says, “...Yeah.  Sure.  Just go, okay?”

Mike goes.

\--

The only doctor he’s allowed to go to, following his orders, is the lady who was there when he first woke up.  She looks really upset when he shows up covered in bruises and stuff, but she does at least have some good news--no broken bones!  Nothing torn, even, just really deep bruises.  Mike credits the suit--go Harley!

The doctor gives Mike a week’s worth of analgesic patches and orders him to rest whenever he’s not ordered to do something else.  Mike doesn’t like lying still--doesn’t like “relaxing” when he could be up training more or carrying out Mister Kane’s work in Motorcity--but she knows better than him and besides, everything _hurts._  Not just the way it hurts when something is wrong and he needs to fix how he thinks, it _actually_ hurts, basically all over his body.

But Mike tries to relax, and hopes that he’ll have a new job soon.


	9. A Tale from the Past: Mike’s Story!! (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The third and final chapter of flashbacks catches us up completely with Mike's side of the story; he meets Miss Julie (whom he's never seen before in his life, ever), then has a rough couple of days. It's hard, being around the Burners. They're the enemy, and Mike belongs in Deluxe, and it hurts.

The girl is familiar.  Long, dark hair and big, dark eyes and delicate hands that clench into tight, hard fists when she’s mad.  Mike knows her but he doesn’t remember her but he recognizes her face but he _doesn’t remember--_

Mister Kane claps his hands with a boom that echoes around the big, empty-walled room, startling Mike out of the loop of confusing thoughts.  He looks up to see Mister Kane ushering the girl forward (the thoughts push again and he tries to focus).  “Introductions.  Commander, this is Julie.  Julie, this is the newest addition to the Kane Co. ultra-elite security force.”

Julie.  It’s _Julie_ it’s Julie.  Some part of Mike is giddy, warm and brilliant with joy at the sight of her.  He doesn’t know who she is.  Of course, doesn’t know.  He’s never met Julie before.  

Mike would die for Julie.  

“This is my daughter,” says Mister Kane, and a shock runs through Mike like he just suddenly understood something, something _very important_ , but it slips away like the hand of a leaving friend.  “And you are going to protect her with your life.  Her safety is your highest priority.”

Highest priority.  Mike remembers the three orders from before, slides them down the list.  Protect Julie.  Protect Julie for Mister Kane.

“Do you understand, Commander?  You won’t talk about her to a single living soul.  You’ll keep her secrets no matter what it costs you.  You will _protect.  My.  Daughter._ ”

Even in the aftershocks of that jolt, this order feels right.  Safe.  Mike looks at her face, her familiar, unremembered face.  “... _Yes sir,_ ” he says.  “ _I’ll protect Julie._ ”

Julie’s eyes widen.  Mike guesses she’s angry.  It hurts.

“That’s _Miss_ Julie, to you.”

Mike’s guts tighten--he doesn’t remember her but he wants her to like him but--there’s an expression on Mister Kane’s face when he looks at Julie, something Mike has seen before. But that was...before, before--something happened.  Before Mike did something wrong.  Something he’s gotta make right.

“You’ll follow her orders as if they were mine, unless they directly contradict my word. Starting tomorrow you’re her bodyguard, until you get further orders.”

Mike straightens.  Make it right.  “ _Yes sir._ ”

But Julie clearly still isn’t convinced this is a good idea.  Mike can’t tell if she’s afraid of him or just disliked him on sight.  Or both.  “Dad, I don’t need a--”

Mister Kane cuts through her protests with the ease of a man used to command.  “You’re going to be my successor, Julie. Until you can defend yourself, you are not to leave your bodyguard’s sight in public unless he’s called away on an independent mission.  I don’t want to hear any arguments.”

Julie tenses like she wants to fight, then relaxes, looking sullenly down.

“...Yes, _sir._ ”

Mike watches Mister Kane’s authority soften to a mix of frustration and regret.  “...Julie...”

“I’m going to my room,” says Miss Julie, and turns her back on Mister Kane, walking quickly away.  Mike’s legs start moving almost before he remembers he’s supposed to follow her (weird, how that happens sometimes now).  She glances back at him, and he sees fury in her eyes before her head snaps back to face forward.  “ _Goodnight._ ”

He follows her through the door and it slides shut behind them.  She moves fast, and Mike’s hurt leg is still complaining with every step; by the time they reach the elevator it’s throbbing sharply in time with his heartbeat and he’s relieved to stand at rest by her shoulder.

It doesn’t last long.  A couple of seconds into the ride down, Julie glances back at him and pushes him away from her. “Back off!” she says sharply, and Mike staggers a few steps back, grimacing behind the mask.   _Ow._ “Stop standing so close to me!”

Mike lifts his head slowly, then nods as the pain in his leg begins recede again.   _“...Yes, Miss Julie.”_

He moves one step back and then, when this turns out to be unsatisfactory, another.  At ease again.

More silence, except for the soft whoosh of the elevator.  Mike keeps an eye on her face, safe in the knowledge that she can’t see his, and--he knows her but he doesn’t remember but he--  She looks upset.  He should try and help with that.  She hates him and she pushed him and she doesn’t want him here but Mike can’t help liking her.  He remembers the look of defiance in her eyes when she looked at her father.

 _“Well,”_ he says, _“that was fun.”_

She turns suddenly and gives Mike a brief look of such open surprise that he almost wants to laugh.  His throat tightens.  His eyes prickle.

“...What?” she says, like he just said _“Dance party!”_ or _“Hey, you wanna go to Ohio?”_.

 _“Mister Kane doesn’t take no for an answer,”_ he says by way of explanation, and this time he really does laugh a little.  It feels odd, like deja vu from nothing at all.   _“That was a pretty good push, though--you’re stronger than you look.  I don’t think you need me here at all.”_

Maybe he’s imagining it, but her mouth seems to turn up at the corners for a single moment.

And then the moment passes and her features fall again, harder and more like her father than he’s seen her yet.

“Watch it.  You’re my bodyguard, _not_ my friend.  Just…”  Mike leans forward a fraction, anticipating the command.  “...do your job.”

 _“Yes, Miss Julie,”_ says Mike. It hurts.

\--

Miss Julie does _not_ warm up to him as the days go by.  If anything, she gets angrier, more tense, more unhappy every time he comes back to her to resume guard duty.  Mike does his best to keep his head down and stay out of her way, and it’s almost a relief to know she’s probably happy when he gets called away for another mission.

Almost.  Mike wishes she liked him.  She’s not as safe when he’s gone.

He stays with her whenever he can, despite the way she ignores him if she can and frowns at him if she can’t.  Leaves her side to sleep and eat and test Alex’s upgrades. Waits for another mission.

A couple of days after he’s assigned to Miss Julie, he gets one.  

He’s in the tower when the summons comes--it’s on the tail of one of his designated times to sleep, so Mike is well-rested and ready to go when the message comes through.  His bruises have settled down, only aching sometimes; his thoughts have settled into that sweet, soft spot full of white fog, without exposure to Motorcity to make things hurt.  

He did almost elbow Harley in the face the day before, when the guy touched the implant on his neck without a warning--jeez, doesn’t he know how important it is that Mike keeps that thing safe?  Mister Kane _keeps telling him_.  But Harley saw him coming and pulled back, so his still-healing nose didn’t even take another hit.  He makes sure to ask when he does mods now.  Mike feels...good!  It’s good to be in Deluxe.  It’s good to be home.

Mister Kane is waiting when Mike gets there, already suited up with his helmet under his arm.  He glances at Mike and scowls, and Mike stands up to attention as hard as he can, straightening his back, holding his head high.  “I’m ready to go, sir,” he offers.  

Mister Kane glances at him and then away again, still frowning.  Not frowning at Mike, though.  He did good, he’s not the one Mister Kane is angry at.  

“I know you’re _ready_ , Commander Chilton.  It’s that no-good--”

“I’m here, sir!”  

Harley rushes through the door, looking harried and _late._  Of course, the pre-mission tech-check.  Harley is still pulling on his jacket as he jogs toward them--an inexcusable breach of protocol, but Mike’s sure Mister Kane will deal with that later.

“I don’t tolerate _lateness_ , Commander.”

“Sorry, sir.”  Harley shoots Kane a nervous, apologetic look as he approaches Mike.  Mike, used to the pre-mission inspection, raises his hands.  He’s ready to _go,_ ready to be down there in Motorcity’s wild air--doing his job, doing his job, fulfilling his mission.  Of course.  “It’s my day off, I wasn’t expecting--”

“You _should_ expect to be on duty at any time when it comes to this project,” says Mister Kane, watching as Harley checks the tech in Mike’s gauntlets.  Mike watches the little lights at his wrists blink red, then green, then go out.

“All good,” Harley mutters, and Mike drops his hands.  Harley moves around and Mike stiffens as his hands work at something on the back of his neck.

“Armor plate’s a bit loose,” says the mild voice behind him.  “Just going to readjust the magnets a bit.”  He sets about tinkering with the plates riding Mike’s spine up to the base of his neck, a familiar feeling by now.

“What were you doing with your day off that was _so important_?” inquires Kane idly.  

Mike hears a faint but sharp inhale behind him, but when Harley speaks, his voice is casual.  “Well, sir, I was on a date with that girl…”

“But you were in the tower?” asks Mister Kane, raising his eyebrows.  “Is she a Kane Co. employee?”

“Yeah actually,” says Harley, seeming to warm to the subject.  “I think she’s an intern or something...you probably know her, sir, I see her on the upper levels a lot.”

Mister Kane says nothing for a moment, but Mike sees his eyes narrow very slightly.  Then, “...What’s her name, Commander?”

“Uh, you know, I don’t know her last name but she told me to call her Julie,” says Harley blithely, and Mike hears a faint click as he slides the last plate back into place.  “Big dark eyes, long kinda red hair…”

“Miss Julie,” says Mike.

“Yeah, Julie.”  Harley’s hands go still.  “What--”  Mister Kane’s face is stony-still, eyes hard and surprised.  Miss Julie had a date?  Harley dated J--Miss Julie?

“...Sir?”  Harley sounds nervous now.  He got close to Miss Julie.  Mister Kane doesn’t look happy.  Julie is the highest priority.

“Is he a threat to Miss Julie?”  Mike asks, and Mister Kane looks at him and then smiles, but not like something is funny.

“...Yes,” he says.  “Yes he is.”

“Mister Kane, sir?”

“Yes Commander.”

“Should I carry out my orders, sir?”

Mister Kane doesn’t answer, but Mike is a good Commander.  He can anticipate orders.  He’s the best and he’ll protect Miss Julie.  

Mike’s first punch re-breaks Harley’s nose.

Mike only hits him three times--that’s all he needs to do.  He knows.  Harley won’t keep talking to Julie.  Harley won’t put her in danger now.  Harley isn’t a threat.  Mike will keep Julie safe.

Compared to the news of Miss Julie’s date, the mission is nothing special--just straightforward driving, fast and precise and no room for error.  (No fun.)  Racing ahead of more cars than Mike has ever seen in one place, aiming for the distant, glowing column of the old main power-conduits.  Mister Kane wants them down.  If the gangs are chasing Mike, if they’re fighting each other, they can’t make trouble for the normal citizens, the ones Mike is here to help.

This will help.  This will help people.

The three brightly-colored cars that tried to run him down the other night are mixed in with the gangs that are following him.  They still make Mike’s chest do something weird, all tight and warm and strange.  He puts his head down, and drives faster.

\--

Abraham Kane only has limited surveillance in the yawning pit of filth and depravity below his perfect city.  There are connections to Deluxe’s network near every entrance into Motorcity, allowing him to broadcast there from above, but that’s where his influence seems to stop.  The Burners may be the only ones actively opposing him, but that doesn’t mean the rest of Motorcity’s gutter rats will tolerate a drone or Hound when they see it.  Occasionally one will make it past the outskirts of some gang’s territory, only to be shot, exploded, melted, or crushed.

If the very existence of Motorcity didn’t fill Kane with rage, he’d be impressed by how many ways they’ve found to destroy things.

Tonight, however, even those wretched Burners aren’t on patrol, and one Hound, guided personally by Kane’s own hand, sniffs out the heat signatures of hundreds of people somewhere in Old Detroit.  Kane has it sit and stay, looking down at The Fist from the roof of a nearby building.  Any closer, and it’s sure to draw the fire of at least fifty different armed hooligans.

The video quality from the Hounds is poor to begin with, but at a distance, it’s abysmal.  Trying to adjust the camera to compensate for the glare of the spotlights shining on the boxing ring, Kane makes a mental note to have Tooley _talk_ to the scientist in charge of this.

One figure in the ring is nobody of consequence--a thin figure in orange and black, nobody Kane recognizes by sight.  The other one is...familiar.  If the spotlights and gaudy gold and red decorations weren’t enough, the way the figure bounces across the ring like an insane flea would certainly do the job.

The Duke is surprisingly competent.  Kane didn’t expect much from him, after what he saw during the invasion, but apparently under pressure the man is actually capable of putting up a passable fight.  

And then a voice yells “ _Perimeter breach, hut-hut!  Invasive action!_ ” and some _thug_ shoots Kane’s Hound right in the eye.

Kane curses and lunges forward for his keyboard, trying to re-establish a connection with the blinded bot, but the Hound was in rest mode, slow to respond.  After a few minutes of furious, ineffectual typing, its signal fizzles out entirely.

Kane growls, frustrated, and banishes the useless screen with a flick of his hand. None of the gangs were even in cars--it’s impossible to tell if the remaining Burners were also watching.  

Well, no matter.  By the time everything is in place, the fight should be over anyway.  Kane is surprised that showy simpleton lasted as long as he did.  With any luck, the Duke and whoever he was fighting will have wiped each other out before the night is over.

With any luck, the Burners will be getting desperate.

Time to bait the trap.  Kane pulls up a screen, and calls Commander Chilton.

\--

Mike feels considerably better after his most recent mission; the power cables weren’t even inhabited, and he fulfilled his mission _perfectly_ without more than a twinge of discomfort at the occasional rogue thought.  He’s ready and willing for the next one!

He does slow down just a little, though, when he gets up to Mister Kane’s office and sees who’s waiting for him there.

“Commander Chilton,” Mister Kane says.  “Good.  It’s time for you to get to work.”  A woman in white gloves is standing next to him.  She looks familiar, but not familiar--Mike frowns at her, trying to remember where he’s seen her.  

“What...do you need me to do?  Sir?”

“Sit down.”  

Mike sits.  The woman is still watching him.  It’s kind of giving him the creeps, which is weird because he doesn’t know her and--and he doesn’t know her, that’s all, there’s no reason for this to be making the skin on the back of his neck prickle.

“Sit still, Commander,” says Mister Kane, and beckons the lady closer.  She’s got a needle in her hands, and something makes Mike’s whole body tense up, something he can’t-- _remember_.  “Where?”

“The neck,” says the woman calmly. Mike feels something jolt up his spine.   _Hold him, Commander._  

“Sir,” he says, eyes on the needle.  “I don’t--I’m not sure I--”

“Commander, let her do her job.”  Mister Kane barely looks at him. Mike takes a deep breath, fighting between the need to do well and the urge to pull away, to struggle--the doctor doesn’t give him that chance.  Before Mike has time to decide either way, the needle stings his neck.

“I’m going to turn it off,” says Mister Kane, addressing the doctor.  “Don’t talk to him.  The elites will handle the rest.”

“...Sir?  What’s going on?”  He can feel it, a thick, unyielding kind of darkness gathering on the edges of his mind, and he feels--his chest is tight, his spine is hot and cold and he’s...scared.

Mike is scared.

“Commander Chilton,” says Mister Kane, as the darkness starts to close in around him.  “Recite the oath.”

“ _I swear loyalty to Deluxe,_ ” Mike says, and his eyes won’t stay open.  “... _to defend...against…_ ”

\--

There’s a boy in a room. In a chair, in white shackles.  Moving hurts, so he stays where he is.

“Wake up.”

There’s a light.  Someone is standing behind it.  Too bright to see their face.

“...I’m awake,” says the boy, and it comes out bleary and messy.  Making his mouth do what he wants it to is hard.  “What happened?”

“Say your name for the camera.”

Yeah.  Yeah, he can...he can do that.  His name is--

“I’m,” he starts, and the words slip away from him into his foggy brain, melting through his fingers the harder he tries to catch them.   _Your name_ what’s your name--?  He tries again.  “My name, it’s--my name...is…”

The voice laughs, mocking, and anger and fear spike up through the fog in his brain and the roaring in his ears.  Anger is clear and real and hard in a world that blurs sickeningly around the edges and he holds on to that because there’s so much to be angry about, he’s _so angry,_ why is he so--

 _Commander Chilton,_ says a voice in the back of his head.   _You have to show me that you can_ take it.

“Chilton,” he says, and the name snaps into place and sends out ripples, a solid fact in the scattered mess of his thoughts.  “Mike--Mike Chilton!  My name is Mike Chilton.”  Knowing feels so much better than he ever would have guessed.  Mike sits back and takes a deep breath at the swell of relief, and for a second everything is fine.

Then things start to filter back into place.  He’s in a blank room.  Chair.  He’s chained to a chair and the walls are white and blank and he can’t remember the words for where he is ( _fear-pain-adrenaline-_ falling) but he knows he’s not home.  

“I shouldn’t be here.”

“You’re right where you belong now,” says the voice, and it sounds so sure it’s hard to keep the thoughts in Mike’s head.   _Yes,_ says a soft, content voice in the back of his head.   _I’m right where I belong._   _I belong in--_

“No,” he says, but even to his own voice he doesn’t sound sure.  Where should he be?   _Where is he_ supposed _to be_?  Somewhere dark and cool and full of colors.  Somewhere where he has people he cares about more than anything.  A place that trusts him, a place he loves and he can’t _remember!_ He should be--

\-- _sitting at a table surrounded by painted walls, the taste of cheap pizza, scratched-out speed limit signs, laughing faces_ \--

Some part of his soul slides silently back into place.

“Motorcity,” he says.  “I should be in Motorcity.  Where am I?”

“Don’t recognize your old hometown?”  The voice is still laughing at him, and Mike grits his teeth and pulls at his wrists.  The cuffs aren’t moving.  It’s all so _familiar_ and he hates it.  “ _Mikey_?”

_Mikey are you okay bro come on let’s go home--_

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why shouldn’t I, Mikey?”

It’s not his, he shouldn’t say it.  He’s not allowed.  “You can’t call me that!”  Mike says, loud and clear, because there’s only one person who calls him that, and it’s--

...and he’s…

Mike can’t remember his name.

“Why am I--?”  The fog, the forgetting, none of this is right.  Everything is so wrong.   _What’s going on._  

 _You failed your last mission, Cadet,_ says a cold, ringing voice in the back of his head, and it makes hate and fear jolt through him, makes him cringe.  “-- _No, I didn’t--_ ” but there’s nobody there, and he doesn’t follow that voice’s orders any more.  But he wants to he wants to he _wants to_ , and something is wrong.  “--what did you _do to me?_ ”

“We’ve got some _really_ interesting drugs up here in Deluxe now,” says the voice.  Mike tries to jerk forward in his chains--the abrupt movement sends the room swimming and spinning dizzyingly.  “We’ve been saving them to test out on something really special.  Like keeping you from pulling one of your _infamous_ escapes.”

“...I followed his orders,” Mike says, and a shudder runs up his spine as memories start crowding forward, scattered images of faces and words and a warm, desperate need for approval.  “What did you do to me, how did you make me--why did I do that?   _What did you do?_ ”

“Mr. Kane’s orders?”  The voice sounds interested.  “Is that what you saw?  Ha!  No wonder you were making so much noise in here.  Pretty sure you cried once, even.”

“No, I wasn’t--” it’s too much, and a headache is starting to throb in Mike’s temples like they’re filling his head with steam. “What do you mean _what I saw_?  He made me--!”

“All we did was pump you full of drugs and chain you to a chair,” says the voice, and Mike can’t breathe.  “You came up with the rest of it by yourself.  We’ve been getting a lot done while you were gone, too.”

“No.” Bruises on his knuckles, his broken nose, he’s not making those up.  He can’t be.  “--Red gave me these.”  He doesn’t sound sure, even to his own ears.  

“Well, yeah,” the voice says.  “He was in here a couple of days ago.  Mister Kane had to pull him off you before he beat you to death.  Pretty brutal, doing that to an unconscious guy chained to a chair, but I wasn’t gonna get in his way.  That happened in your hallucinations too, huh?”

“ _How did you make me follow his orders?”_

“Oh, come on.”  an exasperated sigh.  When Mike tries to see the figure standing behind the light it flashes so bright he has to close his eyes or be blinded, black and white sunspots flashing behind his eyes.  “You’d rather believe in _mind control_ than a bad trip?  Get over yourself.  You’re not some super-powered secret weapon.  You’re a scared kid who ran away from what needed to be done as soon as somebody expected you to step up.  Maybe you should ask yourself why you saw what you did instead of arguing with me when you know I’m telling you the truth.”

Mike grits his teeth, tries to remember _right_ , but he looks down at the inside of his bare left arm and there are marks there--maybe from a syringe, he can’t tell.  A ripple of doubt goes through him.  Why would the guy lie to him?  The memories stewing in his head feel more and more like dreams by the second.

He squints into the darkness, searching for the source of the voice, and thinks maybe he sees--what, pale skin, blond hair--a blur, nothing he can focus on.

“Do I…”  He swallows, blinks, tries again.  “Do I...know you?”

“ _Knew_ ,” says the voice, sounding suddenly a little less like a professional interrogator.  “I swear, Chilton, you--sir?”  Silence; the faintest sound of someone speaking over a private comm.  “Sir.  Yes.  Sorry.  Right away.”

And then a door opens, and a silhouette moves through it, pausing only for a moment to look back at Mike before shutting him in again.

Okay, thinks Mike.  He can get through this, get out of this.  His friends will find him no matter what, they’ll get him out of--

_“...t want to risk leaving him here too long.  Kane Co. Tower couldn’t hold him last time, so we’re going for something a bit more inconspicuous this time.”_

Voices.  Outside the door, faint but audible.  Mike tries to slow his breathing, closing his eyes and focusing as hard as he can on the sounds

 _“Sure, but_ moving... _ing Chilton? The day after_ tomorrow _?  We’re not prepared for...with that.”_ _  
_ Inaudible.  Something muffled.

 _“Right!”_  Same voice again, but louder.   _“The day after tomorrow!  We’re not miracle workers!”_

 _“He’s just a kid,”_ says the other voice, the one that spoke to Mike before.   _“He’s not all that...s.  And he’s weak as a...nyway…”_

They’re fading, growing further away.  Alright, thinks Mike.  That’s some information, at least.  What now?  What can he do now?

 _Call Mister Kane,_ says the voice from his nightmares. Mike shakes his head, shuddering, trying to throw that thought off, but it lingers, sending cold little shivers up his spine.   _Call Mister Kane. He’ll come and get you_.   _Call him, like…_

Like the guy who woke Mike up did.  He took a call from Kane, right there in front of Mike.  The prison cells in Kane Co. tower are blocked and buffered and locked up tight, but if Kane could make a call, maybe Mike can too.

It can’t hurt to try.

“... _Call,_ ” Mike mumbles--his throat feels sandpapered. “...Call Chuck.”

There’s silence for a long, long time.  Mike leans his head back against the chair and focuses on breathing, feeling his whole body throb and ache.  

And then, just as he’s about to force himself to sit up again and try to think of a new plan, the call goes through.  Miraculous but undeniable, _the call goes through_ and the screen pops up, and there they are, blurry and pixellated and frozen in place but _there._  

“Guys?” The call is still frozen.  Mike clears his throat roughly and tries again.  “ _Guys._  Is anybody there?”

“ _Mike!_ ”  The picture unfreezes in a jittery rush and everybody pushes into the picture, staring at him with the same mixture of shock and delight that’s welling up in Mike’s chest right now.  Mike straightens up and grins, feeling something heavy and cold that was weighing on him lift away.  That feeling and the sight of their faces seem to settle it; of course he would never work for Kane, no matter what Kane did to him.  It was a bad dream.  He’s going home.

“Hey!” he says, louder than he meant to, and the shouting only increases, questions and greetings coming at him a mile a minute.  “O--okay,” he says, more softly.  “Ssshhh.   _Sshh_.”

A noise from outside makes his head snap up again, eyes fixed on the door, but after another moment of silence he turns back to his Burners.  “I don’t know--how much time I’ve got.”

 _“Where are you?”_  That’s Chuck, pulling his bangs all the way back to show anxiously darting eyes.

“Dunno,” says Mike after a moment of trying to think back to everything that’s happened since he woke up.  “Uh...one of Kane’s prisons…”

He tells them what he’s heard, and of course Julie pounces on the new info.  ”Moving you?  When?  How long until they transport you?  Wh--”

“Day after tomorrow,” says Mike quickly--it’s probably the only question he can answer.  And then he hears the footsteps, quick and loud, coming closer, and he knows his time’s almost up.  He has to _say_ something to his friends, he needs them to remember--”Guys, _listen_ , I want you all to--”

Someone shouts outside, and as the door slams open the connection closes, leaving Mike squinting painfully into the bright light from the hallway beyond.  But his eyes are adjusting faster now, and this time he sees the face of his the guy who woke him up.

“...Jenzen,” he says slowly.  “It’s you?”

“You look pathetic, Chilton.”

“Do you _even_ \--” trying to raise his voice makes his throat itch and burn; every hacking cough sends pain through his already-aching ribs.  When he looks up, eyes watering, Jenzen is still there, watching coldly.  Mike tries again, more quietly now.  ”Do you even know...what Kane’s _doing_ here?”

Jenzen scowls, a face Mike recognizes from a thousand shared training exercises.  “I don’t care.  I do what Mister Kane tells me.  That’s one thing I’ve go on you.  Right, sir?”

“That’s right, cadet,” says and all-too-familiar voice, and the light from the corridor is half-eclipsed by a new figure, burly and broad, arms folded across its chest.  “Thank you for your...assistance.   _Dismissed!”_

“Sir!”

Jenzen is gone, and now it’s only Kane and Mike.  It’s becoming an all-too-familiar feeling for Mike, and he hates it.  He hates it and it--

It _hurts_.

Mike tries to ignore the fear and nausea constricting his gut.  “I don’t know what you’re planning, Kane--”

“That’s right,” Kane interrupts bluntly.  “You don’t.  Doctor, you know what to do.”

It’s the woman.  Mike remembers her, can see his face clearly in his memory--his _memory,_ a real memory, not a hallucination or a dream.

“No,” he says.

“Yes,” says Kane.

\--

Waking up is...hard.  Mike tries to remember what he did yesterday and feels his body jerk as a mess of pain and confusion hits him.  It’s like a dream--but it was real--but it’s like a dream he can’t quite wake up from and--waking up is hard--

“Commander Chilton,” says a voice, and Mike feels a surge of combined love and hatred so powerful it’s almost like vomit rising in his throat.  He tries to say _“Yes sir”_ and--and _something else_ \--and it gets tangled in his mouth and he can’t--

“Forget yesterday.”

Mike wakes up.

“Sir,” he says.  “Mister Kane.  I don’t--I think I’m sick or something, sir.”

“Get up,” says Mister Kane.  “We’re on high alert today.  I need you to keep your...coworker in line.”

“Red, sir?”  Mike doesn’t remember standing up, but he’s on his feet and feeling better now.  The bad feelings are seeping slowly away like a nightmare forgotten, and he’s glad.  They hurt.

“Whatever you want to call him.  I have very good reason to believe the Burners will invade Deluxe within the next forty-eight hours and I need both of you to...handle it.”

Burners in Deluxe?   _The enemy._  Mike’s jaw clenches with outrage  How dare they?  He belongs in Deluxe.  How dare they?  “I’ll do it on my own if you want, sir,” he says.  “I think I can handle--”

 _“No!_ ”

Mike’s familiar with Mister Kane’s outbursts--the cadets heard enough of them during training--but he’s still not used to having them directed at him.  He swallows what feels like the beginnings of a lump in his throat and says, “No, sir.”

Mister Kane relaxes.  So does Mike.

“Be ready to move, Commander,” he says.  Mike nods, understanding-- _Get your suit on.  Visit Harley for a tune-up._ Wait.

Mike can wait.

\--

Alex Harley gives him a weird look when Mike walks into the prep room.  “...Commander,” he says, very cautiously.  His nose looks extra broken today.  Oh, right.

“Commander,” says Mike brightly.  “Sorry about the nose.  I can’t let you get too close to Miss Julie.”

“Uh...right.”  Alex gives him another one of those confused, cautious looks.  “I--no problem.  I won’t.”

“I know.”  Mike smiles at him.  “You’re a smart dude.”

Alex stares at him for another long second, and then shakes his head slowly and turns away.  “I guess he wants you suited up all day,” he says.  “I changed the material a little bit, it should wick heat a little bit better now.  Since you’re wearing it for such a long time.”  He holds out the suit--it looks the same to Mike’s eyes, but when he takes it out of Harley’s hands it’s definitely a little bit lighter.  It feels weirdly like some kind of peace offering, which is kinda funny because Mike likes Alex just fine!  He only punched the guy because he had to it was important the most important. He likes Harley.  He’s smart and kinda nervous--he would totally like Chuck!  

Mike should introduce them after he’s done with this top-secret mission.  When Mister Kane says he can.  Chuck’s gonna be so mad at him for vanishing like this, but if Mike tells him how he wasn’t allowed to send any messages and introduces him to another super-smart guy to talk to about science, maybe Chuck will let him off the hook for that one.

“Commander?”  Alex is frowning at him, kinda worried-looking.  “Are you going to suit up?”

Mike has totally been just standing here smiling at his suit for at least thirty seconds straight.  He straightens up, clears his throat and grins.  “Yeah!  Sorry.”

Harley walks around him as he strips off his uniform, stopping him occasionally to very cautiously check the implant or the remaining bruises and cuts from Mike’s...combat training.  

Mike doesn’t like thinking about that.  It still hurts.  He pushes that down and stretches instead, enjoying the temporary freedom of a tanktop and shorts before he has to put on the heavy suit.

“...I wonder if you’re stronger than me,” says Harley.

Mike turns, surprised--Harley is squinting at Mike’s bare arms with that sort of weird measure-count-analyze look he sometimes gets.  He doesn’t really seem to know he just said that out loud, but it’s a good question.  Mike squints right back at him, trying to judge how much of his build is muscle.  He’s in good shape--Kane Co. training really is the best!

“Dunno,” he says, “--we should spar some time, without that jerk Red around.  You’re pretty fit!”

“I--” Harley looks spooked again.  He starts to say something--stops and starts again, stammering.  “...you--too, you’re in pretty good--great--thank you.”

“No problem,” says Mike, and throws a few light, fake punches at him.  Harley flinches and hops back a step, then winces and staggers a little as his left leg buckles under his weight.

“Whoa, dude,” says Mike, instantly regretting the play-fighting.  “You alright?”

“Just...you know, what the other guy did to my knee,” says Harley, waving away Mike’s hands as he reaches out to help.  “And...the broken nose.  Again.”

“Again?” says Mike, frowning.  “Who broke it before?”

Harley stares at him.  Grimaces.   _“This was a bad idea,”_ he mumbles, which just confuses Mike even more.

“What?  Dude, you can tell me.  Is someone bothering you?”

“It’s no big deal,” says Harley, really fast.  Then, when Mike keeps on frowning at him, “...I can handle it.  I can--it’s fine.”

“Okay.”  Mike backs off reluctantly, picks up his suit and starts pulling it on.  It really does feel less bulky now!  Sweet.  “But--if you ever need a hand, y’know.  I got your back.”

Alex makes a weird kind of noise like he’s trying to say like five things all at the same time and can’t quite get any of them out.  Then he just nods and turns away to grab Mike’s gauntlets for him.

\--

Mike doesn’t know how Mister Kane got his information, but of course it’s good.  Mister Kane wouldn’t act on it if he wasn’t sure.  The Burners invade Deluxe that afternoon.  Bots suddenly go haywire, firing and dropping mines on a construction site--at least they picked a place with no innocent citizens in it.

Being grateful to them for that makes Mike’s stomach twist.  He puts that in his back pocket.  No.  He--

He doesn’t think about that.

Harley locks down the system while Mike handles the rogue bots.  He doesn’t like destroying Mister Kane’s bots (it’s so satisfying when they blow up, orange blooms of fire and the heavy _crunch_ of metal) but he fights and listens to Harley list off terminals feverishly as he closes them off.  

“ _They’re locked out,_ ” he says finally, “-- _whoever was hacking us, they have nowhere else to get in. Somebody is activating my traps at the decoy location--the Burners must be there now._ ”

A distraction.  Mike nods and crushes one last bot.  Doesn’t watch as its eye flickers out.  Why does that feel so-- _weird_ now?

“At least it’s not green,” he says, and hurts, and feels a little bit better.

“ _Huh?_ ”

“Uh…”  Yeah actually, what?  “Never mind.  I’m gonna go back Red up.”

“ _He’ll love that,_ ” Harley says, his voice low and tight with barely-restrained laughter, like he couldn’t resist saying it.  Mike laughs.  “ _I’ll withdraw the activated traps for now, that way you can get in.  Bottom level of the building.  I’ll give you directions when you get there._ ”

“On my way,” says Mike and sets off to capture some Burners.

\--

Harley’s right.  Red _loves_ it.  He throws one of his tantrums as soon as Mike shows up, and continues to spew snark and sarcasm and insults against Mister Kane’s orders the entire time Mike tries to help him lock the Burners down.  Mike doesn’t look too hard at the Burners.  The enemy.  He calls Mister Kane with the good news while Red puts the cuffs on.

“ _Collar them and get them up here as soon as possible,_ ” Mister Kane says.   _“And don’t let your_ friend _do anything else to them before they’re in the Tower.”_

Mike glances around just in time to see Red nearly sprain a Burner’s arms to get them into cuffs.  Mike remembers him from the fight in Motorcity--tall, purple shirt.  The one who called him “Blue”.  “...Doesn’t look like he’s interested in following that order, sir.”

 _“What?”_ Mister Kane snarls, and the sighs darkly.   _“...Of course.  Tell him I’ll talk to him now.”_

“Sir.”  Mike shuts down his comm and turns back to the action, fully prepared to see Red kicking one of their captives in the face.  “Red.”

Red’s too busy slamming one of the Burners against a wall to answer, and anger sears Mike’s gut.   _“Red!_ He wants to talk to you.”

Red pauses, letting the boy in his grip drop to the floor, and then, to Mike’s outrage, actually does pretend to try and kick one of the Burners.  He’d better get his act together after his talk with Mister Kane, Mike thinks, and slides almost unthinkingly to one side to avoid one of Red’s characteristic bruising shoulder bumps.

Seems like guard duty would be the thing to do now.  Mike can do that.

Looking at their faces up-close for the first--the first--time, the first time, he’s both surprised and not surprised by how _young_ they are.  His age, maybe even younger.  Especially the one Red had pinned against the wall, the one who was facing Mike down when he came through the door.  He’s curled up against the wall now, his face turned--away--both familiar and unfamiliar.

_No.  No.  No._

No, it’s--that’s--

Mike drops into a crouch, head throbbing, and squints blurrily at the guy, the Burner, the _guy_ \--he _knows_ \--but he doesn’t know--

In an instant, without even thinking about it, Mike grabs the other guy’s shoulders and pulls him around, close, staring wildly into his face.

It’s _Chuck_.  It’s _Chuck it’s Chuckles_ \--Don’t talk to anyone from outside Deluxe-- _But Chuck is from Deluxe_ \--But Chuck is a _Burner_ , the logo is right there on his chest, the same as it was on the screen Mister Kane showed him.  Mike tries to say something but can’t, the sound churning in his throat like rocks in a blender.  Chuck’s trying to get away from him, screaming, scared of him--if Mike could just _say something_ to him--

One of the other Burners yells, and Mike looks up and lets go. The Burners lean in against Chuck’s shoulders like they’re steadying him as he falls back, and he stares up at Mike like he’s something terrible but that doesn’t make any sense he’s just--Mister Kane’s orders--he has to follow his orders, that’s not terrible, that’s great.  That’s a great thing, it’s okay.  It’s fine.  It’s the mask.  It’s because he’s not allowed to talk because Chuck’s a _Burner he’s a_ Burner--

Mike’s head throbs.  It hurts.

And then Red comes back and shoves the Burner--Chuck--the Burner--back against the wall with one foot, and Mike has all the distraction he needs.  There’s so much _anger_ in him all of a sudden and he doesn’t--know--why--it hurts.

He has to follow the mission.  He has to follow his orders, that’ll help, and it won’t, it won’t, it _won’t_ , not Chuck--

He gets the collars out on autopilot, and just that little gesture of loyalty helps.  Reminds him how good it feels to do as he’s told.  It only lasts a second though, because when he reaches out toward Chuck with the collar, Chuck makes an awful, terrified noise and winces away, squeezing his eyes shut.  One of the other- _-Texas, Tex, it’s--_ the guy from the bridge, the one that dove out of his car and head-butted Mike in the gut.  He yells at Mike and Mike closes off the hurt, laughs a little bit instead because since when do _other people_ yell at _him_ for scaring _Chuck_ , this is so backwards _it hurts it hurts_.  He collars them one at a time.  Leaves his best friend for last, and doesn’t think.  

He needs to talk to Mister Kane.  He needs to know what to do, he needs orders.

“...What did Mister Kane want?” he asks Red, and Red’s voice is a distraction.  Anger is good, anger keeps the pain from getting bad.  If he’s talking to Red, he doesn’t have to think about the kids behind him, how looking at them makes everything _burn_.

And that would be great, except Red _won’t stop_ bringing it back to them, trying to get to them, trying to _hurt_ them and that’s wrong, against orders and _wrong._  Can’t hurt them.  Mike pushes back, and argues and pushes and finally Red growls and throws up his hands, stalking off toward the door.

“ _Kane._ ”

Mister Kane doesn’t answer immediately.  He sounds busy.  “ _What do you want._ ”

“ _I want payback._ ”

“Mister Kane, I _told_ him our orders,” Mike says, and then becomes abruptly aware how that kind of sounds like something a whining kid would say--clears his throat.  “He’s trying to hurt them, sir.”

A moment of silence.  Then Mister Kane says “... _How is that your concern, Commander?_ ”

It’s--it’s not, of course it’s not, Mike knows.  The Burners are enemies.  But...orders.  He has orders.

“I can’t let him break your orders in front of me, sir,” he says.  

“ _How does it make you feel?”_ That’s Harley.  Mike blinks, surprised by the suddenness of the question--how he felt definitely never mattered when he was a cadet.  

“Uh...sorry, sir?”

“ _What’s your reaction to the thought of, uh...Red...hurting them?  Against orders?_ ”

“It makes me angry, sir,” Mike reports faithfully.  “It makes me think...I don’t know.  It hurts.”

The words don’t make any sense, but they make perfect sense but they’re a mess and he’s being a disgrace but that’s how he _feels_ and--

“ _Capture the Burners and take them to Kane Co. tower,_ ” says Mister Kane, and then before Red can cut in, “--intact.”

Red makes a noise like a vomiting cat as the connection shuts down, and Mike breathes a sigh of relief.  Then Red turns on him and starts shouting, because apparently the fight isn’t over, which isn’t right it _isn’t right_ Mister Kane ended it--and Mike is _furious_.

“Why do you even _work_ for Kane Co. if you’re going to disobey orders like this?  Kane Co. values _loyalty_ , loyalty to Deluxe--”

 _“From gullible idiots like_ you _,”_ Red interrupts, his every syllable acidic with vitriol.   _“You_ deserve _each other, you and your precious Burners!”_

“My--”  It hurts.  Mike is _so_ angry.  “I--I don’t _care_ about the Burners--”

 _“Then_ prove _it,”_ says Red.   _“They’re your enemies, right?  Enemies are people you_ want to hurt.”   _Like I want to hurt you,_ says every line of his body, the echo of his intonation.  Mike shakes his head, gritting his teeth, trying to think--it hurts.

“That’s not how we do things here,” he tries.  “That’s not--Deluxe is a great city, we don’t _do_ that.”

Red tenses again and then, surprisingly, withdraws.   _“Right,”_ he says.   _“So we’ll just see what happens to them when Kane gets his hands on them, I guess.”_

“Yeah,” says Mike, sounding more confident than he feels, “we _will_.”

 _“Looking forward to it,”_ says Red, though there’s still a hot undercurrent of resentment in his voice.   _“And I promise not to touch a hair on their heads until then...sound good?”_

“Let’s just do this,” Mike mutters, folding his arms, and Red twitches.

_“You don’t give me orders, Chil--”_

“Hey!  That’s _Commander_ to you.”

Red doesn’t answer, just storms back into the cell.  Mike sighs deep in his chest and follows.  He’s so ready for this day to be over.  He’s so tired.  It hurts.

At least things are going okay now--or they seem to be, even if Red is still a little unnecessarily rough with the first Burner.  Mike reaches for Chuck, trying not to be threatening, to show him--somehow, any way he can--that he’s not going to hurt him like Red wanted to.

And then behind him, the first Burner yells in pain.  Mike turns, and the Burner is on the ground at Red’s feet, groaning.  Red is yelling at him, and Dutch is trying to do what he’s told but--the _Burner_ is trying to comply, but he’s hurt _._ Rage flares in the back of Mike’s throat, fills up his skull hot and acidic.  He’s standing up and walking over before he can think about it, blocking Red off from the Burner on the ground, not backing down as Red steps into his space.

“ _Move,_ ” says Red.

“I saw you hit him!”  It’s Chuck.  His voice is just how Mike remembers it, but high and trembling and breathless with fear, and if Mike wasn’t already angry, that frightened voice would definitely do the job. His arms tingle; his gauntlets buzz.  Mister Kane is going to take them and keep them from hurting people and _it hurts_ and it’ll be fine and Red doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  Red draws himself up, and he’s obviously angry but Mike is _angrier,_ Red said he _wasn’t going to hurt them_!  “I saw it, you just--you don’t want him to know you’re disobeying your orders!”

And then Red draws back a fist to hit Chuck--a Burner, he’s a Burner but he’s-- _Chuck,_ he wants to hit Mike’s best friend and that’s _not_ okay.

Mike punches Red in the gut.

Immediately, he notices the difference between this and the other times he’s used Harley’s shockwave tech--the buzz and shake is there, but instead of knocking Red back off his feet it seems to soak into Red’s suit, lighting him up for just a second in Deluxe blue.  Then the blue is gone, and the powerlines along his body glow bright red again, flickering back into life.   _Oops_ , thinks Mike, and then they’re fighting, and he doesn’t think much at all.  Red’s helmet bangs into his, loud and disorienting, and Mike twists, trying for a body throw.  

Red moves with him, irritatingly sure-footed, gloves sparking and snapping as he and Mike lock forearms.  Mike slams a knee into Red’s stomach, once--twice--and then he’s against a wall, trying his best to knock Red back.  It’s like his second test with Red, the one where he wasn’t allowed to fight back, and he _doesn’t like it_ , not again, never again-- _not unless Mister Kane says so_ \--NOT THIS TIME--

Mike’s head throbs and his guard weakens, but Red’s looking away from him, and then he goes flying into a wall.  Mike instinctively turns to watch him as he falls, even as his brain says, _Burners_.  He whips back around, too late--a green plasma bolt kicks his helmet, leaving a black streak across his vision, and he falls back too.  For a second his sound cuts out and he’s left in the unbearably close stillness behind his visor, trying to recover some semblance of composure.

_Come on, Mike, this isn’t like you._

_Get up, Commander Chilton._

Sound’s back.  Mike shakes his head and scrambles to his feet, looking wildly around.  The Burners are gone.  They ran.  Behind him, there’s a wordless scream of rage, and then Red bolts past him with a snarl that might be _“Not again!”_ Mike follows at a run, determined to reach the Burners first--it _can’t_ be Red, it can’t.

 _“Commander Harley!”_ he pants into his comm, hoping the bolt didn’t take that out too.  There’s a tense moment of silence, and then a fizzle of static and Harley is back in his ear, talking fast and worried.  

“ _\--power surge and shock-absorption, but I can’t re-establish a link to--_ ah, got it! _Commander!  M--Commander Chilton, what’s your status?!”_

“They got out of the cuffs somehow--”  Mike shakes his head again--the knockback from that plasma bolt snapped his head back on his neck and his head is throbbing _it hurts it hurts it hurts._  Red is in front of him, lit up, popping lights as he goes.  “Lock it down, _lock it down!_ ”

The warning lights come on.  “ _They must have a hacker--stolen key--?_ ”  Harley sounds half annoyed and tense, half impressed--the familiar background-sound of frantic typing filters through Mike’s comm.  “ _How far have they gotten?_ ”

“We’re still on the bottom level,” says Mike, and turns the corner just in time to see metal spikes shoot out from the walls, slamming together between the running Burners and the door.  They backpedal, see Mike and Red--waver, uncertain and scared.  “You’ve got ‘em!  Going in.”

Chuck has his hands up, aiming a slingshot with a glowing holo-screen at Red’s helmet, firing off fast, desperate shots that Red easily avoids or redirects--when did he get a slingshot, of all things?  It was never a weapon, it was--engineering, something, just a harmless omnitool implant, it wasn’t a weapon Chuck doesn’t fight Chuck isn’t--

Mike is still trying to fight through the scattered thoughts fighting for control in his ringing skull when the guy Red knocked over in the cell pulls out something purple and hissing and angrily-glowing, and everything else becomes second-priority.   _DANGER._

For a minute, Mike blacks out.  The force of the shockwave flattens him against the ground, and even through his helmet it makes his skull ring and his ears ache.  His first thought, when the ringing subsides enough to think in words, is _are they okay?!_ And then _what was that?_  And then _good, safe, got him away.  He’s safe._  

Then a flailing hand smacks him in the helmet, and he realizes that he’s flattened over Red’s angry, thrashing form.  Red is sputtering out fragments of curses, punching and kicking almost indiscriminately.  It’s like trying to shelter a furious cat.  Mike scrambles away, spinning around--

He looks back just in time to see the Burners vanish through the gaping hole in the floor.

\--

Red is incandescently enraged.  They argue all the way back to Kane Co. tower, all the way through the elevator ride, and right up until Mister Kane’s hologram appears in the office, waiting to meet his daughter.  Mike had expected to give a full debriefing, something more detailed than the bullet-point run-down he relayed to Mister Kane after the Burners’ escape, but apparently it’s time for another one of Miss Julie’s lessons.  That’s more important, Mister Kane told him.  Mike agrees.  Julie is awesome, and Mister Kane’s daughter, and Mister Kane should get to spend time with her.

Mike thinks that’s great, which makes sense because Mister Kane is a great man.  So he doesn’t mind standing at attention through the lesson, having a little time to think.

Mister Kane seemed pleased enough by the results of the mission when Mike first told him the results; the Burners _were_ stopped, caught, whatever they wanted in that prison _in that cell where it hurts, where do you belong, Mikey?_  They were stopped.  They were collared, like the one Mike wears around his neck, the one Kane Co. gave him.  So they’re...safe caught cornered free _in danger_ \--

Mike is still not at 100%.

He comes back to himself just in time to hear Mister Kane’s voice, directed at him.  “...Commander, you’ll stay and debrief.”

Ah.  Mike breathes the slightest sigh of relief; he’s familiar with this.  “Yes, sir.”

Mister Kane is...not as happy with the results as he’d seemed initially.  It makes Mike feel sick to his stomach, sends nauseating jolts of wrongness up his core to knot in the back of his throat.

“--locked prison, with all security precautions in place and _reinforcements--_ are you _listening_ to me?!”

“Yes sir!”  How could he not, the most important thing it’s the most important-- “Of course, sir!”

“Remove your helmet, Commander.”

That’s--hard.  Baring his face right now, no mask and nothing to protect him--

He doesn’t need to be protected, he doesn’t deserve to be protected.  Failed Kane Co.  Failed the mission.  

Mike takes off his helmet and takes a deep breath of the cold, clean Deluxe air, forcing his expression blank, forcing himself to stand straight with the helmet under one arm as Mister Kane nods and keeps talking.  

It only lasts maybe five, ten minutes, but it feels like years longer.  Mike stares ahead, breathing slowly, feeling the pain mount unbearably with every sharp word and disgusted gesture until he wants to drop to his knees and scream.  It wouldn’t be so bad if he could just _tell_ what hurts, but it’s _everything._  Something’s not right, something’s _not okay_.  Chuck screaming.  The Burner in purple looking up at Mike with pure hate in his eyes.  The third guy jumping in front of his friends, glaring at Mike and Red like he’d take them both on for the other Burners _of course he would of course--_

But there’s something else wrong, a piece missing.  It’s _so_ important, something he _needs_ to remember, something that should’ve been there, some _one_.

A missing Burner.

That’s what it is.  Mike tries to listen to Mister Kane-- _”And the next time you see them I expect_ more _from you, do you understand me?!”  “Yes sir.”_ \--but now that he’s put words around the thought, _missing Burner_ , he can’t help chasing it, hardly wondering in his daze of fatigue how he knows it or why it’s so important.  Who is it?

Chuck.  The one in purple.  The fist-fighter.  Chuck.  The one in purple.  The fist-fighter.   _Someone else.  Someone else_.  It’s important.  It hurts.  They need to be all together and safe--collared--free--captured-- _SOMEONE_ \--Jules.   _(Cowboy.)_

Julie.

Miss Julie’s a Burner.

Mike can see her, in his mind’s eye; see her in Motorcity colors, dark and vivid.  The glint of her red hair and big, dark eyes in the Motorcity neon.

“... _Sir,_ ” he says, so quiet he barely hears himself, more a breath than a word.  “...I…”

“Dismissed, Commander.”  Mister Kane doesn’t look around.  “You know your orders.”

“Protect Miss Julie,” says Mike, and feels that certainty settle in, heavy and comforting.  Tell Mister Kane about Burners, yes, but-- _protect my daughter this is your highest priority._ _Keep her secrets_.  Mike can do that.  “Protect Miss Julie...I have to go find her…”

He picks up the helmet, even though it feel like it weighs a million pounds; slides it on.  The bruises from his fight against Red are aching like they’re fresh, every injury _Kane gave you--_ every injury he’s gotten over the last couple of weeks all pounding in pain.  In the cool, too-close confines of the helmet, his breath feels too hot.  The back of his throat tastes like acid and blood. Protect Miss Julie, Julie, Jules, keep her secrets.

Mike leaves to find Miss Julie.

[ ](http://toastyhat.tumblr.com/private/image/151127058224/tumblr_oeapflKKyL1rpgisp)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Back into current events!! How will Julie deal with this revelation? What's Kane's next move? Who's going to cry next? These questions and at least like two more will be answered in Chapter 10! Thanks for bearing with us through a whole three chapters of flashbacks!


	10. "I Belong In Deluxe!"  Julie Kane Fights For Her Friends!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Burners struggle to cope with the increasingly-widespread devastation as gang warfare spreads into the city center. Julie struggles to cope with Mike's desperate rationalizations as she pushes his orders to their breaking point.

Julie stares at Mike.  Mike stares back at Julie, looking slightly rueful, tired and battered.  She can see a red line crossing the corner of his thin mouth, a healing split lip, and yellow-black blotches around both eyes.  There’s a white brace fitted to the bridge of his nose-- _How did it get broken? We couldn’t have done that, he was wearing a helmet when we fought him--oh my god Blue is Mike, I ran into_ Mike _with my_ car--

But that realization pales compared to the revelation that _Mike is here._ It’s Mike. It’s disconcerting, how mild his expression is, how he looks like he just told her they need a hard-to-find part to make a repair to Nine Lives.  And the worst part, the _worst_ part, is when she starts to move forward to hug him her eyes catch on those quietly-glowing blue gauntlets, she remembers the collars around the other Burners’ throats, and she slows.  Stops.

“Told you you wouldn’t like it,” Mike says, and kind of grins, and Julie feels like the floor just dropped out from under her.

“But--” she starts, breathless, bewildered.  “But--I thought--Alex Harley...”

“Oh, I know Alex!” says Mike brightly.  “He’s just working on my tech and equipment and stuff now.  I think he likes it better that way.  He’s a funny guy.”

 _I don’t believe this,_ thinks Julie.  “I don’t believe this,” she says out loud, sinking to the floor with her hands on her head.  “This...this isn’t who you are anymore, Mike!  Why are you doing this?”

“It’s not too hard to understand, Jules,” he says, and the tone of warm, teasing sympathy is familiar but right now it just makes her want to punch that smoothly content face.

“Well, from where I’m standing it doesn’t look that way, so why don’t you _explain_.  Explain why all of this is happening, explain why--why you didn’t _tell me before_ ,” she says tightly, clenching her hands into fists, trapping strands of hair between her fingers.  Mike looks surprised for a moment, then nods seriously and crouches next to her.

“I know you.  I know you’re a Burner.  But I don’t remember you and I saw the others and I didn’t know them but you were missing but I don’t remember you.”

Julie stares.  “...Mike?” she says slowly.  His matter-of-fact, explanatory tone hasn’t changed the whole time.  He doesn’t seem to have noticed the way his explanation just turned into word salad; he just tilts his head to one side, smiling a little.

“What?” he says.

“We…”  This is so wrong, she has to fix this.  “We’re going to Motorcity.  Come on.”

Mike’s grin falters.  “Oh,” he says, and his eyes do something...weird.  Flat and distant for a second, like his mind is somewhere else.  Like Mike is somewhere else.  “Oh, no, I’m sorry, Miss Julie.  I can’t do that.”

“I’m giving you an order!”  Saying it feels awful, but it doesn’t sway Mike.  He just shakes his head sharply, backing away a step.

“I can’t,” he says.  “I can’t.  I--I can’t, I’m sorry, my orders.  Mister Kane.  I belong in Deluxe.”  The words send a heavy pang through Julie’s chest, but they seem to comfort him because he repeats it to himself.  “...I belong in Deluxe.”  Like a mantra.

“But…” _how,_ but _why,_ but _this isn’t right you should know this isn’t right…_ “Mike--what are you doing here?”

Mike looks up at her and grins, the same grin he would flash at her before he jumped into Mutt for some crazy rescue mission, and once again Julie is taken off-guard by how... _normal_ he looks.

And then he says, “Whatever Mister Kane tells me to do!” and the sense of familiarity shatters.  Julie gets to her feet slowly, wondering on some level why her hands are shaking.

“What’s up, Miss Julie?” asks Mike, standing with her, and Julie has to bite her lip to stop herself from telling him not to call her that anymore.  Her job just got a thousand times more dangerous and complicated and she can’t take the chance of making her dad suspicious.  It’s suspect enough that she knows Mike’s identity now, any sign of familiarity is too big of a risk to allow.

“We have to get you out of Deluxe.”

Mike makes a sharp, choked little noise like the words hurt him and shakes his head. “I can’t.  J--Miss Julie, seriously, please stop saying that.”

“But he’s _hurting_ you--”

“Julie!”  Mike’s voice actually breaks, his eyes are strange and wide and almost scared.  “It hurts--no, I belong in Deluxe.  You--you can’t say that.  It hurts, you _can’t_ say that.”

“But--”   _we need you back,_ she wants to say.   _We missed you_.

“Please,” says Mike again, bruised and miserable and...changed _._  “Miss Julie, it…”

“...hurts,” Julie finishes for him, and Mike nods gratefully.  The terrified pain that clouded his face when she tried to talk about Motorcity is already easing away again behind that mild, distant smile.  “Okay.”

Mike slumps.  “Thanks, Jules.  Uh--Julie.  Miss Jules--Miss Julie!  Uh...” he smiles, bright and familiar.  “...Promise?”

“I promise. We...won’t talk about stuff like that.”  About Burners or Motorcity or what her dad--

_Dad._

Julie realizes now that her hands are shaking in anger.  He _did_ something, and that’s why Mike’s acting so weird, why he...knows, but doesn’t remember.  Why he treats every word from her father like immutable law.

And now she’s going to go and ask her father what he did.

“Mike,” she says, and he gives her that bright, questioning look, ready for orders.  Julie’s stomach turns over.  “Put your helmet back on.  Stay there.”

“But--”

“ _Stay there._ ”

The walk to his office feels short.  The walk across the length of his office floor to his desk feels much longer; just seeing him in person is enough to tinge her righteous anger with unease.  But then she remembers Mike’s face, that questioning smile, and her uncertainty burns away.

Kane’s coming to meet her halfway, eating up the space with long, businesslike strides, a smile already crinkling his eyes.  Julie isn’t going to let it stop her.

“ _Dad_ ,” she says, letting out all of her fury but keeping the fear and anguish to herself, “why didn’t you tell me my bodyguard was _Mike Chilton_?” (Even in this state, she has to remember, never just “Mike”, always the full name.)

Kane turns a disapproving glare on her, one that would normally have been enough to make her reconsider her attitude, but she’s flying high on rage and full of knife-like purpose and everything is a little too bright.

“I told him to take his helmet off--”

“Why?” Kane growls, folding his arms.

“Well I don’t know, maybe because I thought it was kind of weird that my dad would give me a bodyguard without telling me who it was?  You might as well have put that--that guy in the black suit on the job!”

“I would never assign him to--”

“But _Mike Chilton_ , Dad?  How do you know you can trust him?!”

“Julie, you’re the one who suggested I should work with my enemies.”

“This isn’t what I _meant_!” Julie shouts, pushing herself up on tiptoe in an unconscious attempt to match her father’s height.  There’s a pause, during which she breathes hard through her nose and he meets her glare head-on with a shrewd, considering gaze.

Finally, his mouth quirks up and the barrier of his folded arms drops and he says, “You’ll do fine as a CEO, Julie-bear.”

“That’s not what I--”

“But I’m in charge right now _,_ ” Kane steamrolls on, holding up a commanding hand, palm out.  “I’m in charge of Kane Co. and Deluxe and whether you like it or not, I’m still in charge of you.”

“And Mike Chilton?” Julie asks suspiciously, giving no ground--in this moment, the nickname _Julie-bear_ rankles.  “I know he’s not doing this because he wants to, Dad.  How are you making him do what you want?  Is there anything _else_ you’re making him do?”   _Tell me,_ she thinks, _tell me and at least let me know you trust me just this once._

“That’s nothing you need to worry about,” says Kane, casually dismissive.  “And if this works out, by the time you have to take over, you won’t have to deal with the Motorcity problem anymore.”

“If _what_ works out?” Julie asks.  She’s not nearly out of questions, but Kane just shakes his head and laughs.

“That’s clearance level 0, honey,” he says, and the fondness in his voice is _infuriating._ “But I’m impressed!  You’re really starting to assert yourself.”

“So?”  Julie says bitterly.  Her dad doesn’t seem to notice her tone.

“So, it’s time you took another step up the ladder.”  He pulls up a screen.  Julie sees her own face, her practically-blank Kane Co. personnel folder.  “...I’m promoting you to level 1 clearance.”

Julie sputters, furious and shocked in almost equal measures.  “I--wh--you think you can just--throw a promotion at me and this will be okay?!  Dad!  It’s _Mike Chilton!_ ”

“And you have the authority to give him whatever orders you see fit,” says her father, and smiles.  “If you don’t approve of his attitude, you have my authorization to...administer discipline.”  He turns away from her toward the expansive view, contemplating the Deluxe skyline.  “I know you can handle the responsibility.”

Julie stares at her back for a long moment, mouthing silently as a hundred different things she wants to say all crowd up at the same time, and then turns on her heel and storms out of the room.

\--

She almost calls the other Burners.

Almost.

On some level, she knows she should.  But then, what would she say?  She couldn’t bear to be the deliverer of yet more bad news, with nothing to soften the blow.  Soon, she promises herself, hunching over her screen and biting her lip.  Just as soon as she has more information to give them, some little ray of hope.  Some idea of what her dad even did to him, let alone how to fix it.

This isn’t how she imagined her reunion with Mike.  It was supposed to be a prison break, a hug, a triumphant return to Motorcity.  Just find Mike and everything will be okay.

Well, she’s found Mike.

Amazingly, everything is even _further_ from okay than it was before.

 _“What are you up to?_ ” asks Mike, leaning over a little from where he’s standing at attention.  Now that she knows who he is, it’s just barely possible to identify his voice behind all the filters.  Julie doesn’t like it, but she doesn’t want to think about what could happen to him if she told him to just walk around without his helmet.

“I’m...trying to find Alex Harley,” she says cautiously.  It may be Mike, but it’s not the Mike she knows.  He reports to her father now.  As much as she’d like to tell him every detail, ask him every question churning inside her, she can’t risk him telling Kane.

 _“Harley!”_ says Mike.  At a guess, Julie would say he’s--happy?  That’s a surprise.

“Uh, yeah...you said you were working with him, right?  What’s he...what’s he like?”  

 _“Good at science,”_ says Mike.   _“Kinda jumpy, but pretty cool.  I think he’d get along well with Ch--I mean.  He’s a good dude, Miss Julie.  Why?  Do you need to find him?”_

Answer carefully.   _Well, you said he was your tech guy now, and I’m hoping that means he can tell me why you’re like this,_ Julie thinks, and then sighs.  “...I just wanna talk to him.  We used to talk in the cafeteria, but he’s stopped turning up there.”

_“Huh.  Well, I think I can help out with that.  You’re safe around him now, so it’s alright.”_

Julie’s gut twinges.  “Safe _now_?  He...wasn’t before?  I thought you said he was a...good dude.”

 _“Oh, he is,”_ says Mike blithely, again without any sign of noticing the weird disconnect between the things he’s saying.   _“But dating him is a threat to your safety.  Just ask Mister Kane!”_

God, Julie hopes there won’t be side effects once she’s got this taken care of.  (She _has_ to get this taken care of.)

She gets Mike to tell her where Harley will be today, taking care not to ask any prying questions about his connections to Harley or...what they’re doing for her father.  Of all the things that are frustrating and scary about this situation, this has to be one of the worst-- _knowing_ it’s Mike under that mask but not being able to talk to him like normal, confide in him or ask him for help.

Instead she thanks him, orders him to go do whatever he wants as long as he doesn’t follow her, and leaves to find Harley.  It takes a good two minutes of coaxing to convince Mike that she doesn’t _need_ any protection right now, she’ll be fine and Harley isn’t a threat.

If anything, she thinks grimly, striding in the direction of the nearest elevator, _she’s_ the threat now.

Harley’s exactly where Mike said he would be, just coming out of one of Kane Co. Tower’s many habitation pods.

“Harley!” she calls, and then, when he starts walking faster, _“Alex!”_

Harley turns to look at her and Julie is briefly taken aback to see him wearing the same kind of white brace on his nose that Mike has.  For a moment, her mind tries to make something of this connection, but--no, she _knows_ Mike is Blue.  This and Harley’s limp must just be coincidences, and it’s not like it’s rare for somebody working on one of her dad’s projects to be walking around with a broken nose.  The only real question is who Kane picked to throw the punches.

“Uh,” she says, trying to act casual despite his appearance, “I thought--you would’ve been in the barracks!  You’re a Commander, right?”

Harley winces, electric blue eyes flicking nervously to one side, away from her gaze.  “Oh, uh..actually,” he says, “I’m...in R&D now.”

“Oh, wow!  You’ve got, like, a workstation and everything?” asks Julie, pushing mercilessly.  He wants her to go away, and it feels cruel but she’s determined to use it as leverage to get at least a little info out of him.  He’s not Blue, but he _knows_ about whatever happened to Mike.

“Uh, yeah,” says Harley, still looking as though he’d rather be anywhere but here.  Julie can’t suppress a pang of pity--he’s involved in some dirty business, but somehow Harley’s managed to stay a pretty nice guy.  That’s more than can be said for a lot of loyal Kane Co. employees.

Anyway, this is probably all she’s going to get out of him.  Julie excuses herself and beats a hasty retreat.

Level 1 clearance may not be enough to soften her anger at her dad and his ominous, infuriatingly cryptic hints, but it does come with some new perks.  When Julie opens her console for the first time after her meeting with her dad, a list of new passwords and authorized sectors pops up for her perusal.  Julie scrolls through and finds _Research and Development._  Finally, after years of encrypted fragments and work-arounds, the heavily-guarded, impenetrably-armored doors of Kane Co. R &D are open to her.

That doesn’t mean she can just waltz in while the department is still full, though--better to wait until nighttime and have the place to herself.  In the meantime, she puts up her hair, steals a pair of glasses and a management-uniform coat from executive lounges and cafeteria tables, and picks up an old clipboard from a meeting room.

By fifteen minutes before the guards’ shift-change, the scientists working there have filtered out and back to their pods and the artificial sky is velvety blue-black.  And around the corner from the doors of R&D, Julie is dressed and ready to go, taking deep breaths to calm her nerves.

One of the Elites yawns audibly, and Julie takes that as her cue.  She turns the corner, clipboard under one arm, head held high, and marches right past the guards like she didn’t even notice them there.

“Hey,” starts one of them belatedly as Julie starts to key in the code, and Julie glances back at him with disinterest and just a hint of disdain.  “Uh...oh.  Sorry.  Ma’am?”  

Julie steps through the door and lets it close behind her.  The inside of R&D is dark and quiet, empty.  One or two of the private labs around the edges of the room are still lit up dimly--the windows are heavily shaded, hiding secret projects from prying eyes.  Even if there is anybody left in here working, they won’t see her bend down over Harley’s work-station and plug one of her custom-built infiltration tools.  It slices his files open like a fish, pulls all his documents and burns them onto a drive for later perusal.  Julie unplugs, slips the drive into her jacket, and heads back toward the door.

She stops outside as the door closes behind her, looks over both of the guards through her stolen glasses, clicks her tongue and makes a few checkmarks on her clipboard.  Then she turns on her heel and walks away.

She sheds the coat, the glasses and the stolen clipboard as she heads back toward her room, already eagerly anticipating some peace and quiet to get a look at what’s really going on.  Kane Co. tower is enormous and complex, but Julie grew up here.  She walks almost on autopilot through winding corridors, up elevators and through communal spaces full of tired employees, and back to her pod...

...Where Mike is waiting outside her door.

She told him to go wherever he wanted, but she can’t help thinking maybe he’s been here the whole time.  He’s still wearing the helmet, but he isn’t calmly standing at attention the way he usually does when awaiting new orders.  He’s pacing back and forth, hands alternately working frantically at his sides and clutching his head.  Julie slows as she approaches, the adrenaline from her little research trip turning into something subtler and more anxious as he turns for another round of pacing and finally sees her.

 _“Jules!”_ A wince.  “--Miss Julie--”

“Come in,” she says quickly, before he can blurt anything else out.  Even knowing who he is, the mask still makes her uneasy; Mike is so expressive, usually, and now he’s closed off.  No matter how hard Julie looks, she can’t see any hint of his face through the blank, flat white of his mask.  “You can say whatever it is inside.”

He nods once and follows her through the smooth, silvery door, pulling his helmet off.  Julie takes it out of his hands as the door shuts and Mike’s eyes snap up to her, dark and wide and worried.

“I have to tell him,” he says, the instant the doors shut behind him.  “That you’re a Burner, Julie I have to tell him.”

“Mike--”

Mike groans, pacing a few steps back and forth in anxious circles.  “--I have to keep your--I can’t tell him, _secret_ it’s secret--”

“Mike, it’s okay...”

“I have to tell him I can’t I have to not tell can’t tell him--”  Mike doubles over until his head almost touches his knees, knotting his fingers in his hair--his voice is shaking.  Somebody cut his hair, Julie notices on some level.  Cut his hair short and locked him up in this stupid suit in her dad’s colors like they were trying to erase everything that made him _Mike._  “Report Burner activity in Deluxe, in--in-- _Jules I have to tell him--_ ”

“No you don’t.”  He squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head slowly, running through the glitch in his orders over and over. He looks so scared and confused that Julie’s heart aches.

She puts a hand on his back and rubs slow circles, and Mike takes a shuddery breath.  “Listen, okay? What’s the most important order Kane gave you?”

Mike breathes.  “... _Protect you_.”

“That’s more important than the second one, right?”

Mike nods slowly.

“So you don’t have to tell him,” Julie coaxes, and Mike doesn’t fight it when she leans him over to put an arm around his shoulders.  “When you don’t know what to do, just remember which one he told you is more important, alright?”

Slowly, the tension goes out of his shoulders.  Mike slumps against her.  “... _Alright.”_

“Alright?”

“Alright.”

 _We’re alright,_ thinks Julie, and for a moment she can almost pretend it’s true.

And then a comm screen pops up next to Mike and something in his helmet buzzes, and he sits up straight again.  Julie watches him scan the message with eager eyes.

“Another mission,” says Mike, and reaches over to pick up his helmet, pushing himself up off the bed.  “Mr. Kane needs the Burners gone if he’s gonna help people.  Okay?  Those are my orders, if I stop the Burners it’ll stop hurting.”

“What?!”  Julie jumps to her feet, hurrying after him.  “--no--Mike!  You can’t do this!”

“I’ve got _orders_ ,” Mike repeats, like this should make Julie understand.  “Mr. Kane has a mission for me.”  His brow furrows.  “It’s okay, Jules, he said I could leave you if it was on his orders.”  Like that was what Julie was worried about, that Mike would be disobeying her dad’s orders.  Like that’s why she’s staring at him, fists white-knuckled at her sides, biting her lip on yelling that won’t do any good.  It’s not his fault.  It’s not his fault, he can’t help it, there’s nothing…

Nothing she can do.

“Yeah,” says Julie, and clears her throat.  “...Don’t hurt anyone unless you have no choice, got it, Cowboy?”

He smiles, and just for a second there’s a hint of something like unease in his eyes.  Then he’s turning away with a casual salute.  

“Got it, _Miss Julie_.”

Julie lets Mike get out of sight, waits an extra two minutes to make sure he’s not coming back, and then dodges back into her room and immediately calls the Burners.  Texas isn’t answering--Chuck’s line gives her a “busy” signal, god knows why, but finally-- “Dutch!”  

“ _What’s up_?”  Dutch takes in her wide eyes, the urgency of her tone.  “ _Julie, what the heck_?”

“Blue is coming,” Julie says, and hears the ring of her dad’s urgent command in her voice.  “Get somewhere you can be seen, get yourselves an alibi!”

“ _How did you know he was--_ ”

“I--I just saw him leaving Kane Co. Tower,” Julie manages--only half a lie.

_“Okay, but an alibi?  For what?”_

“For the _attacks_!” Julie shouts, and then catches herself--takes a deep breath, trying not to think about how many times she’s seen her dad do the exact same thing--and tries again.  “I mean...you heard Junior before the fight!  People are suspicious of the B--of us.  You can’t stop Blue if everyone in Motorcity thinks we’re the ones behind his attacks!”

Dutch opens his mouth to argue, and then closes it and growls, frustrated.  “-- _fine!_  Fine.   _Anything else you wanna say before we go get pizza or somethin’ while a crazy guy smashes up our city?”_

That hurts, but not nearly as much as the thought of losing all her friends.  Julie steels herself and says, as boldly as she can, “Yeah, actually.  I’m worried about those collars.  Until I figure out what they do--”

 _“How’s that comin’ along?”_ asks Dutch, the anger in his voice suddenly tempered by hope.  Julie takes a breath, wanting to make excuses-- _Well, Blue is Mike, and also my bodyguard, so things have gotten a lot more complicated recently and--_ but stops herself.

“I’m working on it,” she says instead.  “I just scored some new intel from R&D, I haven’t had time to look at it yet--I’m just scared what might happen to you guys if you get close to Blue while you’re wearing them.”

She half-expects Dutch to raise his voice again, but instead his face softens and he says quietly, _“...Yeah, me too.”_

“Right,” says Julie, relieved.  “So...just stay safe, okay?  We can focus on taking care of Blue when we’ve got those things off you.”

 _“Sure,”_ says Dutch.   _“But you better get down here too, otherwise they can still point fingers at you.”_

“On my way,” says Julie, slipping out her door.

It only occurs to her when she reaches Nine Lives’ hiding place that there is one Burner who doesn’t have to worry about a collar.  Julie could still go after him herself, even if there are...other complications with her getting close to Blue.  She could try to stop him.  It’s stupidly dangerous, but she has to try, right?   _For Mike and Motorcity._

Julie grits her teeth and punches the gas, feeling that same sense of purpose and relaxation that she gets every time Nine Lives passes 100 miles per hour.  It’s somehow easier to focus here, when speed wipes away everything but the road ahead and anyone keeping pace with her.

The slight smile pulling at Julie’s mouth drops at the thought.  There’s no one with her today; it’s not as though the rest of the Burners have also been kidnapped and brainwashed, but with the collars on it feels almost as though they’ve been taken away just like Mike.

 _Faster_ , thinks Julie, and pushes Nine Lives’ limits right up until the point the highway vanishes out from underneath her.

It’s not a long fall--the struts of the highway are only maybe six feet tall at this point--but it feels like a hundred feet, and when Nine Lives hits the ground, suspension bouncing and complaining, Julie actually screams aloud.   _A short drop,_ she thinks frantically, _Just a little jump you forgot was there, nothing to be afraid of, STOP BEING AFRAID--_  But her heart is pounding uncontrollably, her breath rushing in and out, too fast, sending her head spinning.  “ _Coming down,_ ” she grits out, and forces herself to sit up straight, to keep her eyes on the road instead of braking and pulling off to the side.  “Where are you guys?”

“ _We’re coming to you,_ ” says Dutch in her comm.  “ _We’re headed in toward the city center.  Plenty of people there.”_

 _“Yeah,”_ Texas snorts, “ _if_ Skinny _ever stops_ grandma-driving!”

“What?”  Julie stares at his icon, startled, and almost misses a turn.  She can see the dots of the approaching cars on her locator: three beacons, one purple, one red, and one in bright blue, lagging behind.  “Is Chuck _driving_?”

“ _I can drive!!_ ”  Chuck says, shrilly defensive, and then lets out a muffled kind of half-shriek as his beacon on the map jitters in a wild zig-zag. His comm shuts back off abruptly.

“ _Yeah, like a_ grandma,” Texas repeats.  “ _Watch your six, Stacie!_ ”

Stronghorn comes roaring out of the darkness, sleek and black and battered.  Whiptail swings in on her right flank, and a second late Blonde Thunder drops onto the road behind her, trailing jagged golden power-surges.  If Julie listens hard enough, she can almost imagine she hears the distant sound of Chuck screaming as he lands the jump.  He’s not really in formation--he falls back as he tries to slow down, then accelerates in sharp bursts when he realizes he’s trailing behind--but he’s there.  Four Burner cars.  It almost feels right.

“ _Antonio’s?”_ Whiptail edges forward--Julie can see Dutch through the window if she glances over fast enough.  “ _Lotta gangs hang out there.  Good place to be seen, if that’s what we’re goin’ for._ ”  He still doesn’t sound thrilled by the idea--fishing for attention has never exactly been Dutch’s thing.  

“ _I think--i-it’s probably smart,_ ” Chuck says.  On a straight road with no swerving or jumps his voice has levelled out a little bit, but he still sounds tremulous and incredibly strained.  “ _I mean, remember that time we almost got framed?  And this time Foxy’s not gonna jump in there to ahhh_ hhhJULIE!  Watch it!”

“I’m six feet away from you!”  Julie pumps the gas once, though, putting space between their bumpers.  “We’re almost there.  I’ll see you guys inside, okay?”

It takes them less than five minutes to get to the pizzeria after that--Chuck slows to a crawl as soon as he gets within fifty feet of an actual person, and then very slowly edges forward and parks neatly inside the lines of one of the ancient, long-ignored parking spaces by the front of the building as the other three Burners skid into a disorderly line and put their rides in park.

There aren’t many gang members in Antonio’s, as it happens--a big guy in the corner who might actually be one of the Electroblades without a mask on, and one or two of the old ladies in denim who were at The Fist with the Duke--but there are plenty of other people around, and plenty of heads turn when the Burners walk in.

“Listen,” says Julie quietly while Texas orders the pizza, “I was thinking...maybe I should head out when Blue starts doing...whatever he’s doing.  Try and help.  I don’t have a collar, I wouldn’t…  Dutch, did you paint yours _purple_?”

“Well, yeah,” says Dutch, looking taken aback.  “Hang on, though, let’s talk about--”

“ _How_?”

“Tape and airbrush, how do you think?”

“ _I_ think it’s a good thing it didn’t make that thing short out and kill him,” says Chuck, adjusting the lint-speckled green scarf he’s wrapped around his own neck.  “I told him, I have other scarfs--”

“They’re all super tacky, dude.”

“My _grandma_ made this one!”

“Did she also teach you how to drive?  Burn!!  Alright, Texas is back bearing gifts of pizza, y’dig?  Chow time!”

Watching Texas jog back to the table makes something click in Julie’s head and she turns to the other boys, squinting suspiciously at them.  “Hey...did you guys tell Texas why we’re here?”

Chuck tries to scoff and snort at the same time, and somehow ends up sneezing instead.  Flushing under his bangs, he says, “Wh--uh-- _no_ , Julie, I mean, you were there, we all talked about the plan on the way over--”

“You know _I_ know it’s possible set comm channels to private, right?” hisses Julie as they draw closer to the table, and Chuck wilts instantly.  “Don’t act like you couldn’t lock him out of the conversation, I _know_ you can.”

“Listen,” Dutch mutters, fast and urgent, “Tex wouldn’t have come if he knew an attack was goin’ down and we all know it, so you can’t just go runnin’ off in the middle of lunch, alright?”

“He doesn’t have to know _why_ I’m leaving!  I go running off all the time,” Julie shoots back, stopping a good six feet from the table to glare at Dutch.  “All I have to do is say I’ve got an urgent message from De--from _up there_ \--and get in my car!”

“You can’t handle that guy on your own!”

“You don’t know what I can handle!”

Texas bangs one fist on the table, causing Chuck, who’d just sat down, to jump up again and smash his knees against the table’s edge.

“Hey ladies!” Texas shouts while Chuck curls up in his seat, whimpering, “If you hate each other so much why don’t you just _marry_ each other?  Come on, pizza’s gettin’ cold!”

Julie and Dutch glare at each other a second longer and then turn in unison to sit down at the table, each reluctantly taking a piece of the proffered pizza.  Chuck follows suit after a moment, but hardly does more than nibble at the crust.

It takes longer than Julie expected; there’s only one slice left in the box when a siren starts howling in the distance.  All eyes turn immediately to Texas, who’s chattering loudly through a mouthful of goat cheese and unnamed meat.

“--so then _I_ was like, ‘uh, _no_ , it was a tie and the bet was _Foxy wins, Junior wins; Duke wins, Texas loses_ , so you can’t have my car’ so they came at me all at once but there’s only five of ‘em so--hey, you hear that?”

“You mean the--siren test they’re doing on Wednesdays now?” says Dutch quickly.  Chuck starts laughing in a way that might have been casual, but instead goes on for an awkward half a minute, becoming progressively more high-pitched and urgent, until Julie elbows him in the ribs.  There’s a long moment of silence, during which Dutch’s face remains frozen in awkward horror and Chuck sinks slowly down in his seat.

Texas stares at Chuck.

Dutch stares at Texas.

Julie wonders if she should take this opportunity to drive off and leave a holo-clone in her seat.

Then Texas says, “Huh,” shrugs, and takes another bite out of his pizza.  There’s a sense of collective relief, and even an audible sigh from Chuck (which he does manage to turn into a yawn).  Texas is too busy savoring his food to notice.

A flash of movement catches Julie’s eye--the big maybe-Electroblade in the corner getting up.  Nearby, a girl in a neon-pink racing suit finishes the last of her nondescript green glass bottle and heads purposefully towards the door.  The other gang members follow one by one, eyeing each other as they move towards their respective vehicles.  No one makes a move--this is Antonio’s, after all.  There were some policy changes after Mike’s trouble with the Electroblades last year, and even hardened gang members don’t want to get banned from the only pizzeria in Motorcity.

Texas remains oblivious to all this until motors rumble to life outside and the normal citizens in the restaurant start to quietly pack away their food and move towards the exits.

“Hey,” he says, “what’s goin’ on?”

“Nothing!” answer Dutch and Chuck in chorus.  Even if Julie hadn’t been building espionage experience for two years now, they would’ve sounded weird.  But she has, and this is almost physically painful to watch.  She can only hope Texas is too clueless to--

“ _Something’s_ going on,” Texas declares, standing up.  “And you guys gotta tell me!  Is it a surprise birthday party?  ‘Cause that’s real flattering and all but it ain’t Texas’s birthday!”

Texas may have missed the sound like faint thunder echoing in the distance while he was talking, but he doesn’t miss the way the building trembles a second later.

“Hey--!”

“Tex!” shouts Dutch frantically, “I’m takin’ the last piece of pizza!”

Oh no, thinks Julie, there is _no_ way this is going to work.

“What?!  Not cool, dude!”

She stands corrected.

Dutch snatches the final slice out of the box and actually dives under the table with it, kicking out one long leg to keep Texas at bay as he tries to follow.

“Not-- _cool!_ You can’t just take a guy’s birthday pizza at his own--surprise-- _ow!_ ”

“If you wanted-- _ouch!!_ \--if you wanted it you should’ve _ffgaken it, Dekshas!”_

“ _Stop eatin’ my pizza_ \--you-- _give it!!”_

“No!”  A skinny brown arm shoots out from under the table on Julie and Chuck’s side, hand gripping a dusty, half-eaten piece of pizza.  Chuck, who’s been standing on his seat like a society lady avoiding a mouse, half-screams and dodges away from it, but Julie gets the idea and grabs the pizza, hopping lightly onto the tabletop as Texas and Dutch keep squabbling below.  In the distance, there’s another muffled _boom_ and a rumble.

There’s a tiny, brief moment where she wonders whether now is the moment.  Chuck won’t stop her, and the other two are busy fighting.  She could just drop the stupid pizza and leave now, get in Nine Lives and follow the sounds of the explosions…

And then the table tips over and Julie falls--

She feels her heart jump, just a little, in the moment before she lands.  Nothing bad, probably just left-over nerves from that jump she missed.  But as Texas lunges bodily over the table to yank the pizza from her hand and Dutch and Chuck shout in disgust-- _”Dude, don’t_ eat _it!” “It’s all gross now!”_ \--Julie thinks maybe this is where she should be.  She’s better with them.  And right now--right now Mike is better without her.

She doesn’t even want to think about what would happen if he saw her down here.

The charade ends when Antonio runs over to tell them to get out, get somewhere safe, there are gangs fighting in midtown and everyone needs to go.  He runs out too, leaving his collection of clay heads--all except one.  The only one Julie can recognize.

Texas leads the way, chewing furiously on the last of the grimy pizza, glaring at anyone who tries to talk to him.  He slams on the gas as soon as Stronghorn’s engine turns over, leaving the rest of them to catch up.  Julie wonders if she’ll ever stop making her friends mad at her.   _Probably not_ , she thinks grimly, and turns her key in the ignition.

It’s already over when they get there.  In her shock, Julie almost forgets to brake, eyes widening with horror as the aftermath of the fight comes into view.

A five-block chunk of midtown is _gone._  There are people picking through the rubble, clustered around dusty, half-buried figures, carrying the injured to the roadside.  More than one person looks up and immediately ducks for cover at the sight of the Burners’ cars cruising toward them.

 _“This doesn’t--”_ Chuck starts, sounding pained and shaken.   _“It--it was all_ here _half an hour ago.  How could--”_

 _“Get outta your cars!”_ shouts Texas, and his voice is bracingly loud and firm.  He’s already on the street, dashing towards one of the broken buildings.  After a moment Dutch follows suit, opening Blonde Thunder’s driver-side door to help Chuck out.  Julie tries to push through the numbness, but she keeps imagining Mike, covered in bruises and scrapes, smiling at her as he picks up his helmet.   _Mike_ did this. Julie’s dad made Mike do this.

She’s not sure which hurts more, and the need to escape that thought finally spurs her forward into the wreckage, over broken concrete and bent rebar.  Every time she spots somebody on the ground her heart does an awful double-beat.  Every time, the first pained groan or shaky breath hits her with relief so strong her legs almost buckle.  
As time passes, more and more people appear to help.  One man, an exterminator with a metal arm, offers everyone dust masks and helps clear an area for a few of Motorcity’s rare medical professionals to set up shop.  They work for hours, and don’t stop until everyone is accounted for.

And everybody _is_.  There are twenty-two people who were unlucky enough to be caught in the crossfire of the gang battle, and every single one of them is there in the tent, bleeding or bruised or groaning over a broken bone, but _alive._  

“It was those freaks from down South Side,” one woman tells Julie, as Julie clumsily wraps gauze around her bleeding hand.  “And the Amazons, and some outskirts gang I never saw before.  Thought it was just a fistfight but then the guys off the outskirts started throwin’ bombs around.”

“I’m surprised any of you made it out,” says one of the doctors, and leans over Julie’s shoulder.  “...That’s enough, you can tie it off.”

“Didn’t think I would.”  The woman pats her leg; it’s a mess of bruises, and her ankle is strangely bent.  “Somebody grabbed me, helped me out of the way.”  And Julie knows, somehow, doesn’t even need to hear-- “--couldn’t see his face.  I think he had a helmet on.”

Julie excuses herself as quickly as she can after that.  She finds a spot far away from the makeshift infirmary, in the ruins of what must have been somebody’s bedroom before everything came crashing down.  Torn posters flutter overhead as she drops back against a crumbling wall and slides down it.  Shards of glass glitter under her boots, scattered around broken frames and crumpled family photos.

She’s still sitting there in silence when the other Burners find her, ten minutes later.  She doesn’t look up at the sound of footsteps, and she doesn’t respond when one of the boys puts a hesitant hand on her shoulder and then pulls away again like they’re afraid she’ll bite.

“...There’s nothing we could’ve done,” Chuck offers, but his voice sounds thin and thready like he can’t bring himself to put any energy into it.  

“We coulda kicked Blue’s butt,” Texas growls.  “If we’d _been here._  Like we totally weren’t.”

“Nobody even saw Blue here,” Dutch says.  “Just a bunch of gangs.  He coulda been somewhere else.”

“Coulda been,” Texas repeats.  “Wasn’t.  Gangs fight but Texas ain’t _ever_ seen them throw down like this before.  He did something.”

Chuck sits awkwardly next to Julie, hunching against the wall.  “But what’s the _point_?  Like--it’s gotta be one of Kane’s plans, right?  Is he just trying to--”

“Man, whatever he’s tryin’ to do, I think it’s workin’,” Texas mutters.

Dutch scoffs incredulously, raising his eyebrows.  “No kidding!  What tipped you off, the way midtown looks like a nuclear warzone?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” says Texas fiercely.  “And like I said, if we coulda taken out Blue--”

“Well, we _couldn’t_ ,” says Julie, speaking up for the first time.  “We can’t find him, we can’t fight him, and we still...we don’t know anything about him, okay?”

“We know he’s a monster!”  Dutch kicks viciously at the ground, frustrated and furious.  “If he was a bot at least he’d have an excuse, but he’s _worse_ than them!”

“Hey, bots are people,” Texas says, offended.  “Not cool.”

“Wh--man, no.  ROTH’s different.  Kane’s bots don’t _think_ like ROTH does.”

“Like Blue does,” Chuck says.

“Yeah!  He comes down here, he tries to get people killed.  That’s on him, he made that choice, right?”

“No one who works for Kane has a choice,” Julie says, and her voice sounds strange and cold to her own ears.  The other Burners give her that look, that stupid look she’s getting so painfully used to, like she’s some kind of weird monster.  “Look, I’m not saying he’s not--”

“If Mikey could pack up and leave, anybody could,” says Chuck, sharp and pained.  

For one hysterical second, Julie almost laughs.  She’d always thought it couldn’t get worse than listening to her friends brainstorming ideas for her dad’s execution, but this might be it.  Once again, she almost wants to tell them, just to ease some of the pain, but just thinking about it makes her throat seize up in panic.  And who’s going to believe her, right now?  Mike’s not like this, this isn’t _Mike._  Mike doesn’t hurt people.  Mike’s not a monster.

“...I’ve got files to dig through,” she says instead, and forces herself to her feet.  “Managed to clean out an R&D workstation.”

“Seriously?”  Chuck straightens up.  “We can take them back to the hideout, I--”

“No,” says Julie.  “They’re in my pod.”

“Oh,” says Chuck, taken aback and more than a little bit hurt.  “Oh, uh...yeah, okay.  But you could send--”

“I can crack them myself,” says Julie, and starts walking, picking over rubble, wishing she couldn’t imagine how they’re looking at her as she goes.  “I’ll let you guys know what I find.  I need to be alone, alright?”

She almost wishes they’d call her back again, ask her what’s bothering her, make her tell them why she just defended the guy who’s destroying their city.  But nobody calls after her, and nothing breaks the long silence as she drives back up, out of the city center, up toward the distant ceiling and out into Deluxe’s cold, blue-white twilight.

Mike isn’t back yet when Julie gets to her pod.  She showers on autopilot.  Scrubs off her dirty hands and lies back on her bed to open up the files she pulled out of Alex Harley’s workstation, ready to at least do _something_ to help today.

Every single page of Harley’s research has its own individual encryption key.

Julie stares at the first indecipherable page blankly for a solid thirty seconds, and then keels over backwards on her bed and closes the window.  Kicks off her boots, feeling the bed bob and sway gently on its repulsors, and then yanks her blankets up and curls up under them.  Her whole body feels heavy and painful.

Julie closes her eyes.


	11. It's Time To Tell Them!!  The Burners, Falling Apart?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Julie digs further and further, searching for hope. But there's only so much she can do on her own, and Mike can't help her now. It's time to come clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it took us 11 chapters to make Mike cry. ((bonus: spot the song lyrics))

Julie stands in the sunset with Mike’s arms around her shoulders.

The place around her looks more like Motorcity, but she knows she’s in Deluxe.  She can’t see the person holding her shoulders, but she knows it’s Mike.  

“Don’t do this,” her dad says, and this time he’s not talking to Mike.  His eyes are fixed on hers.

 _He won’t let me,_ says Julie, and steps away from Mike’s hands, toward the edge.   _Mike won’t let me fall._

“Yes he will,” says her dad, as Julie’s feet come to the edge, as he weight sways over the void.

He’s right there.  She could jump, instead of falling.  She could reach out.  But Mike’s behind her, and he’ll catch her.

Julie falls, and reaches back, and feels Mike’s fingertips slip past hers.  Someone yells her name, desperate and awful and cracked with fear, but over the sound of the rushing wind in her ears Julie can’t tell if it’s Mike or her dad.

Julie falls.

She wakes up with a jolt so strong it feels like she’s been electrocuted, gasping in huge lungfuls of air.  Somebody is shaking her shoulders, there’s a shape leaning over her and blocking out the light.

“Ju--Miss Julie-- _Julie_ , hey--”

It’s Mike. Julie stares at him, adrenaline still singing in her veins, frozen in place as reality comes rushing back.  She’s in bed.  She’s not falling, Mike _did_ catch her.  She’s as safe as she ever is.

“I’m okay,” she manages shakily.  “I’m fine.  Bad dream.”  And then, as he sits back, “--take off the helmet, okay?  Just--if it’s only you and me, you can just take it off.”

“You were talking in your sleep,” Mike says as he follows orders, and she can’t tell if it’s Commander Chilton, reporting to her, or if it’s Mike, sweet and worried and clumsy with other people’s fear.  “You said...you told me not to let you fall.  You asked _me_.  You used my name.”

Julie pushes down her covers--her back feels sticky with cold sweat, her eyes are burning.  “It doesn’t matter.”

“Did you dream you were falling?”

Julie looks up sharply; Mike is looking at her evenly, head a little bit on one side.  “I dream that too sometimes,” he says, and Julie’s heart constricts.  She’s heard what happened.  Mike, falling.  Her dad standing on his war-pod looking down and down and down, waiting to see the sudden stain of red on his pure white city.  Somehow, in all her worrying about Mike’s bruised face and broken ribs, she never thought to wonder if he also dreamed about falling.

“...You remember?”

“Remember?”  Mike blinks, and for a second disquiet tightens his strange, far-away eyes.  “I’ve never fallen, Jules.  I’ve never--no.  But I dream about you falling.  All the time.”  

Julie reaches out and hooks an arm around his shoulders, pulling him in.  Mike makes a startled little noise and then half-laughs and pats her back, rubbing in slow circles.

“I would catch you,” he says.

“I know.”

They sit in silence for a couple of long minutes after that.  Then Mike sits back and just looks at her for a second, smiling a weird kind of distant smile.  His hand on her back slides up and touches her hair gently, red-black strands sliding between his gloved fingers.

“...your hair is red,” he says.  “I forgot I knew it was red before I forgot how red it was.”

Julie doesn’t ask.  He gets so confused, so... _scared_ when she makes him think about what he’s not allowed to remember.

“Go back to bed,” she says, as gently as she can. “You need to get some sleep.”

“I’m pretty bad at that,” says Mike, and smiles.  “You sure you don’t want me to stay here?”

“I’ll be okay.”

“Okay.”  Mike rubs her back one last time, and then pushes himself off the bed and snags his helmet.  “I would catch you, Miss Julie.  Okay?”

“Okay.”  Julie hesitates and then, before she can stop herself, “...and...we would catch you.  If you were falling.”

“I’ve never fallen,” Mike says immediately.  “I would never fight--no, I’ve never fallen.”

“Forget it.”  Julie shakes her head, regretting the words already.  “Don’t worry about it.  Go get some sleep.”

Mike nods, slides his helmet back on, and marches out, closing the door behind him.

The quiet after he leaves is peaceful, but the room seems big and quiet without Mike in it.  Julie lies in the dark alone for a couple of minutes, and then sighs and swings her legs over the side of the bed.  She’s not getting any more sleep after that.  Might as well try to make a start on Harley’s files.  

It turns out that’s easier said than done.  Julie tries every key she can think of; hours tick by as she throws words and phrases at the first page of Harley’s research.  Once in awhile one of her guesses will throw up a short word in the middle of the mess, but never more than that.  

It’s four in the morning when Julie gives up and calls Chuck.

Chuck is usually awake at any ridiculous hour of the night, but this must be one of the rare nights when he didn’t stay up late working on a project, because when she calls him, the first thing that appears on the screen is one big, pale hand, flapping at the screen in the dark.  Then the blankets in the background shift, and Chuck’s face emerges from the covers, hair in disarray, squinting at the screen.

“... _Julie?_ ”  He yawns hugely.  “ _...whssup?”_

“I know I...I kind of snapped at you earlier,” Julie says.  “Sorry.  But...it looks like the guy I stole those files from used some kind of cipher on every single page of his work, and I’ve tried everything I can think of.  I need some help.”

“ _Oh._ ”  Chuck blinks drowsily, and then the screen swings as he sits up, hair falling back over his bleary eyes.  “ _Yeah, sure.  Did you try the obvious stuff yet?_ ”

“What stuff?”

“ _Y’know,”_ Chuck says.   _“Deluxe Oath.  The guy’s name.  Digits of pi.  The basics._ ”

“Pi?”

“ _Uh, yeah?_ ”  Chuck laughs.  “ _Half of the guys I was in the EnSci program with used pi as their cipher key.  Thought they were_ really _smart.”_

Julie pulls up the first page of Harley’s research, and keys in “3”.  Gibberish.  “31” Gibberish.  “314”...

 _“Project Designation: ‘Remote Control’,_ ” Julie reads, breathless with relief and exhilaration, “-- _head of production, Alexander David Harley…_ this is it!”

“ _Cool!_ ”  Chuck grins, combing his hair back from his eyes just long enough to catch a flash of one wide, delighted eye through his bangs.  “ _Do you need any more help?_ ”

“Nah,” says Julie, and this time she means it.  “You should get some sleep.  Sorry I woke you up.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but within the next five minutes Julie finds herself regretting it.  Even after she manages to decrypt the first few pages, that’s only half of the battle; Harley’s writing is rambling, and thick with references to other projects and documents in his files.  Fortunately, none of the other files seem to be high-priority enough to get the same treatment as the first document Julie opened--she opens up a dozen different files, surrounding herself with screens full of dense text, pulls out a new document to take notes on, and sets to work.

Hidden in the middle of the original, heavily-encrypted document, after four or five pages of scattered research notes, she strikes gold.  Scans of ancient paper plans, with holo-pen scribbles and notes all over them.  The original writing on the papers is faint enough it’s almost impossible to read, but it’s impossible to miss the heavily-stylized logo in the corner.

Julie reads through the first four pages of scanned notes and then minimizes the files, pushes her equipment hastily into her backpack, and goes to find Jacob.

\--

The kitchen is full of the smell of early-morning experimental cooking when Julie walks in, yawning and achy from hunching over her screens all night.  Jacob waves an oven-mitted hand at her.  ROTH chirrups and waves a bottle labelled _CHICKEN JUICE_ in shaky pen.  Julie doesn’t ask.

“What are you doin’ down here so early?”  

“I was going through some files last night and I found a few of them with your name on them,” says Julie.  “It looked like somebody thought they could figure out...mind control?  Any idea what that’s about?”

Jacob stares at her for a moment, apparently uncomprehending, and Julie thinks maybe there’s been a mistake, but then--

“He went back to _that_?” Jacob growls, staring into the distance.  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised…”

“So you do know something about this stuff?”

Jacob shakes off whatever he was thinking about and focuses on Julie instead, grimacing.  “Well sure, I guess.  But what you gotta know is, it wasn’t _supposed_ to be mind control.  I was going for, well, a kind of instant communication system.  You say it, the other guy thinks it.  Easier than talking, I thought!  But Kane had other ideas.   _Of course_.”

“And how was it supposed to work?” Julie presses, her gut clenching.   _Is it reversible?  Is there any way at all to stop it?_

Jacob eyes her shrewdly.  “...What’re you thinking?  Does it look like Kane’s made it work after all this time?”

“No no no,” says Julie quickly--too quickly, perhaps, because Jacob still looks suspicious.  She hastens to add, “It’s just...these files have been accessed recently, so I thought it might be worth knowing about.  You know, in case he ever does get it to work.”

“Well, he can try!” says Jacob, cracking a yellowing grin.  “We didn’t have all those fancy factories and machines when I was working with him.  We had to put them together by hand, you put one thing together wrong and they’d never even start up!  It was a bio-implant in the back of the neck, see, but even when we got one working and tried it out, none of our materials could handle the power source.  Conductivity.  The kinda power we were workin’ with, it was melting everything I put it through.”

“...Yeah,” says Julie.  “That makes sense.”   _Back of the neck._ She thinks about the high, sturdy collar on Mike’s new outfit, the armor plating up his spine.   _Check._

“Anything else you need?” says Jacob, glancing back at his kitchen.  “I gotta take these knishes outta the oven soon.”

“No, that’s--I’m good, thanks,” says Julie.  “Gotta go!”

The boys are in the garage--Chuck and Dutch fiddling with Mutt’s inner workings, Texas pounding relentlessly at one of his many punching bags.  Julie slows as she passes them, thoughts of implants and mind control melting away from one singular, urgent impulse: _Tell them._

 _I can’t,_ she thinks, and then, amending that, _Soon!  I’ll tell them soon, I’m_ almost _there._

 _Tell them_ now.

Harley’s documents will help, but they’re not quite enough.  Julie has to do something concrete, take at least one step towards freeing Mike so that--

So that what?  What does she think is going to happen when she tells them?

What _is_ going to happen?

“Hey, Julie, come look at this!”

Julie comes back to the present with a physical shock, gasping as she whips around to stare into the garage.  Dutch waves at her with an oil-smudged hand, gesturing to Mutt’s engine with the other.  “We put a new booster in!  Good for four hundred MPH up to ten seconds!”

“He’ll just use it right away on something dumb,” Chuck points out, and everyone kind of laughs.  Texas says something like _“Yeah, that’s Tiny alright.”_

“Next up, paint job!  I’m thinkin’ the usual, but with--hey, Julie, where you goin’?”

“For a drive!” Julie calls back, not looking around as she reaches Nine Lives.  “Later, guys!”

\--

 _Later_ isn’t good enough.  She may not be able to tell the other Burners anything yet, but she can at least try to get some kind of evidence.  

Easier said than done.

Any pictures or videos taken in Deluxe are automatically saved to a cloud.  Useful if you want to be able to upload your selfies to Kanebook from anywhere, but unfortunate if you don’t want those selfies seen by the surveillance teams sorting through new additions to the cloud every day.  Julie wouldn’t be surprised if there were facial recognition protocols in place to recognize the features of archived Enemies of Deluxe.

She doesn’t even want to think about the story she’d have to come up with to explain to her dad why she’s taking photos of Mike Chilton.  With his helmet off.  In her bedroom.

And anyway, she wants to tell the other Burners in person.  She wants to give them something more than Jacob’s old files and Harley’s research, something more than a photo.

They won’t have any way to doubt her if she brings Mike with her when she tells them.

The idea of going down to Motorcity makes Mike really upset, but following her orders for small things seems to actually make him happier and when he’s happy he kind of...coasts.  Wanders around after her, smiling faintly.  It’s painful to see him so quiet and complacent, but it’s infinitely better than watching him get upset and confused.  She may not know what her dad did to him, but at least she can use whatever it was to her advantage.  She can find loopholes, she can twist rules.

So.  Talking about Motorcity directly is off the table.  Mike shuts down when she does that, or says anything about the Burners.  She can’t exactly stuff him into Nine Lives and drive off.  She’s going to have to take this slowly.

“...Hey, Mike,” she says.

“ _Yes, Miss Julie?_ ”

“Let’s go for a walk.”

“ _There’s safer ways to spend your time, Jules,_ ” Mike points out, but he sounds amused through the voice filters and he’s already getting up.  “ _Staying in the tower is the--”_

“I want to…” Julie hesitates, thinking fast, and then, feeling like a heel but determined to see this through, tries, “...go out and see our city.  It’s beautiful, right?”

Mike sits up straighter.  “ _Yeah!  Sure, you’re right.  I belong in Deluxe._ ”

“Mmhm.”  Julie pulls on her backpack.  “Would it be...safer for me to fly us most of the way there with my pod?”

“ _Yeah,_ ” says Mike again, gratefully.  “ _That’d be great._ ”

The old Mike--the _real_ Mike--would have laughed and suggested they should go for a drive instead.  Julie turns away from the blank, mirrored surface of Mike’s mask and starts keying in coordinates to the nearest access tunnel on her pod’s controls.

Mike sits happily chatting and tapping his feet as they soar over Deluxe in Julie’s pod, but when Julie lands and steps out, walking toward an access tunnel, he goes quiet.  Julie turns back, waiting, and he follows silently with his head down.

When Julie gets to the mouth of the access tunnel Mike actually stops, hands working like he’s resisting the urge to make fists.  His gloves are glowing.

“Hey.”  Julie reaches out, hesitates and then lays her hands on his gauntlets.  “...Hey.  Mike?  Look at me, okay?  You’re doing a good job, following me so you can protect me.  You’re doing a great job following orders.”

Some of the tension eases out of his shoulders.  Julie wishes she could see his face, but her dad has obviously given Mike orders about taking off his helmet outside the tower, let alone halfway down to Motorcity.  She backs down the tunnel, keeping her face toward him, and after a second of hesitation Mike follows her.

The road down to Motorcity is a long one on foot, and Julie feels like a sitting duck walking down agonizingly slowly in her Deluxe jumpsuit.  If any Motorcitizens see the two of them slowly picking their way down one of the access roads in their Deluxe colors, they’re in serious trouble.  If one of her dad’s bot patrols comes by and catches them on camera…

Well, Julie’s not going to think about that right this second, because there’s nothing she can do right now to make this go faster.  Mike is reluctant enough to follow her as it is, one shuffling step at a time.  If Julie started running, he would probably crack right then and there and call for backup.

...call for _backup_.

The other Burners can get to her much faster than she can get to them.  Mike would put up a fight, but with Julie there he wouldn’t be able to go at 100%, and if she ordered him not to fight, he would...well, he would probably have a breakdown, but at least they could capture him then.  They could keep him under control, get that implant out of his neck, _fix him_.

The idea of explaining how she got Mike down here, willingly following her into Motorcity, makes a pang of tight fear shoot through Julie’s gut.  But she’s got to tell them.  It’s time.  It’s past time.  And they can help, now!  They can help bring him back, instead of just being stuck the same way Julie has been, knowing there’s something sickeningly _wrong_ with Mike and not knowing what to do about it.

Julie takes a couple of fast, long strides, widening the gap between her and Mike, and pulls up her comms.  “Guys,” she hisses.   _“_ Ears on!Guys?”

“ _Who are you talking to?_ ”  Mike is very tense behind her, feet dragging, shoulders pulled in tight like he’s trying to take up as little space as possible.  “ _I’m not supposed to be down here, Miss Julie, I--I don’t have a mission--_ ”

“We’re just walking,” Julie says quickly, but Mike is looking past her.  The glow of Julie’s comm screen is reflected on his helmet in the darkness.

“... _You’re calling the Burners,_ ” he says.

“What?  No, Mike--”

“ _I can’t be here,”_ Mike says convulsively.  “ _I belong in Deluxe and, and, and--you’re not safe, Jules!  We’ve gotta go._ ”

“No!”  Julie hurries back to him, hands raised soothingly.  “Mike, look at me.”

“ _I_...am,” Mike grits out, garbled through his suit’s filters, choked.  “ _Julie please--don’t make me, I--_ nhh, _I can’t be down here, I don’t belong here--it_ hurts _!”_

“We’ll fix that!”  Julie reaches out, and Mike goes still all over and makes a shuddering sound when her hand touches his mask.  “We’ll make it stop hurting.  Look, just...let me--”

“ _Please,_ ” says Mike again, and Julie never wants to hear Mike beg like this ever again, it’s the most awful thing.  The worst thing.  “ _Julie, no.  Please.  Let me go back, let--_ ”

Julie keeps a hold on him and Mike groans and makes a jerky motion like he wants to pull away.  But he’s not running and Julie can _feel_ it, she’s so close.  She hooks her fingers under the cold edges of his helmet.

“ _No,_ ” says Mike, but it sounds weak, shaky.  “ _I can’t.”_

“You have to,” says Julie, and pulls his helmet off.

Mike lashes out so fast Julie doesn’t know what hit her.  One second she’s reaching blindly for the back of his neck, feeling for the cold metal under his collar, and the next she’s hitting the ground on her back with a winded grunt.  The helmet slips out of her hands and rolls away, and she looks up and sees Mike staring down at her with wide, wet eyes.  Motorcity’s distant lights glint off the tears on his cheeks.

“...Mike?”

For just a second Mike stares out at Motorcity, and there’s an expression of pure longing on his face.  His hand half-rises, like he wants to reach out toward the lights far below.

“ _Mike._ ”

Mike takes a stumbling step forward--another one, slow and unsteady.  Julie scrambles out of his way, still breathless from the impact of hitting the ground, staring after him as he staggers down the road toward his city.

And then he stops, and bends down, and picks up his helmet.  Looks at his face in the mirrored surface, and then bows his head like he can’t meet his own eyes.  

“No,” Julie says, and starts to push herself up.  “Mike, _don’t!_ ”

Mike turns back to look at her, and Julie _sees_ him go back under.  His eyes become distant and that fierce, proud longing fades away.  And then he’s gone.

Mike puts his helmet back on, and turns back toward Deluxe.  He reaches out and pulls Julie toward him, and she struggles a second too late and hits him but not hard enough.  He picks her up, head down as she punches and kicks, eyes fixed on the road as she curses and yells.  He carries her up through the darkness, past warning signs and into the soft, white glow of Deluxe, and only then does he crumple down to his knees and hold onto her, shaking all over.

“ _Sorry,_ ” he’s saying, over and over again, and even through the filters his voice sounds wrong, hoarse and small.  “ _Sorry, sorry, I belong in Deluxe, I’ll fix it, sorry, I’ve gotta fix it, Mister Kane needs me to be--to--sorry Jules, sorry--”_

“Stop apologizing!”  It’s not your fault, she wants to say, you didn’t do anything, dammit, and I just hurt you for no reason and you’re _apologizing to me for it._  

“ _Sorry,_ ” Mike says again, wretched.  “ _Yes, J--Miss Julie.  I can’t let them take me, I_ can’t, _I belong here and--I can’t terminate my employment yet, I have more I need to do._ ”

“Terminate…?”  A sick jolt runs through Julie’s body.  She wishes it was confusion, that she didn’t know what those words meant.  “What are you talking about?”

“ _If I’m compromised, I have my orders_ ,” says Mike.  

“If w--if _they_ capture you, he ordered you to--”

“ _I’d do anything for the good of Deluxe,_ ” says Mike, and saying the words makes him flinch all over but he keeps talking like he didn’t notice his own reaction.  “ _I took an oath.  You know the oath, Jules, I_ meant _it._ I dedicate everything I have to Kane Co. and the city of Deluxe.  My life is--”

Julie wraps her arms around his chest and holds on.  Mike makes a startled noise, grip loosening for a second, and then hugs her back.  He’s still shaking all over; on-and-off, uncontrollable jags of shivers.

“It’s okay,” says Julie, and hears her own voice trembling.  “It’s...okay.  Go back, Mike, it’s okay.  Just go back.”

 _“Okay,”_ he says, so softly it’s almost inaudible, just a rush of static.  When he stands up he looks steady enough on his feet, but he walks like someone in a daze, slow and dreamlike.  He doesn’t even pause to tell her not to go to Motorcity or tell her it’s not safe, just follows the light of Deluxe above like a guiding star.  A moment later, he breaks into a gentle run, and then he’s gone.

_“Hey, Julie?”_

Julie starts with a gasp and whips around to see Dutch’s icon on her left.  Hoping her voice won’t sound too thick, she coughs and sniffs and says, “Yeah, hey.  I’m here.  What’s up?”

 _“I should be askin’ you that,”_ Dutch points out, and then, before she can answer, he continues, _“but also we do have some stuff to show you, so we can fill each other in when you get…  Hey, are you not in Nine Lives?”_

“Oh.  Yeah, just...admiring the view from the Southwest maintenance road,” Julie fabricates on the spot, while trying staunchly to keep her eyes away from said view.  God, she’d forgotten how high up she is.

 _“Well if that’s all you’re doin’ you definitely gotta be here for this!”_ says Dutch, and he sounds almost happy.   _“Call me back when you’ve got your ride, okay?”_

“Will do,” says Julie.  She waits until Dutch’s icon vanishes, then wipes her eyes, stands up, and heads for her car.

It takes a while--the entrance hatch that hides Nine Lives is six blocks away--but at least when she does get there. her eyes are less puffy and her face is mostly clear.

“On my way,” she tells her comms, and this time her voice comes out clear and bright, no trace of tears.  “ETA...five minutes.  Might take me eight.”

“ _Cool!_ ”  says Dutch, and then “ _Agh, watch it!_ ” as something crashes in the background.  “ _Jacob, she’ll be here in eight!_ ”

“ _I can fix it in eight!_ ” Jacob’s voice says, faint in the background, and Dutch actually laughs.

“I’ll...I’ll be right there,” says Julie, baffled, and Dutch’s icon flickers off her dashboard.

When she pulls into the hideout, the cars are all there, including Mutt with her new paint and Blonde Thunder with the hood up, obviously abandoned in mid-calibration.  Julie parks and hurries upstairs, where she finds the Burners gathered around a machine she’s never seen before.  

Texas is sitting in the corner, with the sulky look of somebody who’s been told to sit still and not touch anything; Jacob, Chuck and Dutch are all circling around the machine, passing screens and tools back and forth and talking to each other all at the same time.

“Oh hey, Brittney,” says Texas, when she walks in.  “So I guess the nerds made something and it’s a big deal or whatever, but _Texas_ isn’t allowed to--”

“Jacob and Hudson put it together!”  Chuck vanishes a screen with an exuberant wave and turns back to her, practically vibrating with nervous excitement.  Whatever this machine does, it’s obviously doing him good just to be working on something again.  “This stuff was in a junkyard, can you believe that?  Look at this!”

Julie honestly can believe it.  The machine is bent and dented in several places, and missing a lot of the plating that should be covering the now-exposed wires and circuitry inside.  It’s a heavy base with a platform to stand on, and then a tenuous, rusty-looking half-cage with nodes and sensors inside.  Half of it is new, covered in ropey welding seams.

“Yyyyeah!”  says Julie, a little late and unconvinced to her own ears.  “What...is it?”

“It’s a scanner.”  Jacob appears from behind the cage, wearing goggles and looking pleased.  “It’ll get you a good look inside those collar doodads.”  He nudges some wires back inside the base with a toe, smiling fondly at the machine.  “Can’t believe this beauty still works!  Well, kinda works.”  He scratches his beard contemplatively.  “...Could still destabilize and overload.”

“Meaning…?”

Jacob clears his throat.  “Meaning, uh...explode.  But the odds of that are pretty small!”  A beat.  “...Not huge.”  Another beat.  “It’ll probably work.”

“Okay,” Julie says, “So I guess Texas is going to do it?”

“What?”  Texas crosses his arms.  “I mean--yeah, no way Texas is scared of a little explosion or two, but come on!  Make Chuck do it.”

“If we make Chuck do it he’ll cry.”

“What?”  Chuck sputters, ears reddening.  “-- _No_?  No I wouldn’t!”  Texas bursts into raucous laughter.  “Come on, I would not!”

“You...might,” Dutch allows, grinning, and claps Chuck on the shoulder as he deflates.  “Don’t worry about it, man, I wouldn’t wanna get in there either.  Texas can take this one.”

“Without CRYING!”  Texas proclaims triumphantly, and punches the air a few times like he’s warming up for a fight.  “YEAH LET’S DO IT!”

The machine makes a worrying whining noise when it starts up, and kind of shudders all over.  Texas, who’s standing in it and glaring around with his fists up, jumps and throws a couple of aborted jabs.

“Put your arms down!”  Chuck snaps, distracted.  “Dude, you’re gonna mess up the scan!”  

“Uh, you can’t tell me what to--”

“Put yer arms down,” Jacob repeats.  Texas blinks, disgruntled, and then flinches and puts his arms down as the scanner whirrs and flickers.  An ancient paper printer, repurposed from some mouldy pile of broken old-fashioned tech, beeps into life and spits out papers one at a time, printing with agonizing slowness.

Finally, the last page prints.  The scanner rattles, clunks, and shuts down.  Texas climbs out of it, glaring at the cage like he’s daring it to start up again, and joins the other Burners in crowding around to stare at the printouts.

Julie squints at the scans, trying to make out blurry shapes.  “...I don’t see any bugs.  Unless Kane Co. is using all-new tech for that stuff, it’s not tracking you guys.”

“But it’s got a power cell!”  Chuck drags his hands through his hair.  “It’s gotta be doing _something_!”

“Maybe he’s faking us out,” Texas says wisely.  “All it does is make the light turn on and off and you’re all screaming and crying and freaking out about it.”

“Nobody’s crying,” Chuck says.

“The batteries don’t... _seem_ to be doing anything but powering the light right now,” Dutch says, and pokes a picture, zooming in as far as he can before the image devolves into grainy static. “...That might just mean it’s not turned on yet, though.”

“Mm.”  Texas pokes a finger at the screen.  “What’s that.”

“That’s one of the batteries.”  Chuck says shortly, and leans in, flicking his bangs back to see the screen.  

“Cool.  What’s that?”

“That’s your backbone, dude.”

“Oh.”  Texas grins.  “Nice.  What’s that?”

“That’s the light. Listen, can you--”

“What’s that?”

“That’s--!”  Chuck starts, loud and frustrated, and then stops and looks closer.  “...What... _is_ that?”

It’s a tiny, bright point, almost invisible in the grainy picture.  Julie reaches out and flips to another picture, frowning; there are more of them visible in this one, arranged evenly around the inside of the collar.  

“Some kind of...outlet,” says Dutch slowly. “So...what, it’s supposed to shock us?”  

“Shock collars?”  Chuck lets out a sort of shaky half-laugh, half-groan.  “Seriously?  That’s it?  I mean…” he tugs at the collar a little bit.  “I mean, there’s two power cells but they’re _tiny_ , how much charge can it even have?”

Julie just stares at the scan, frozen.   _How much charge…_

“...There’s only one size of battery pack in Deluxe,” she says distantly.  “Uniform.”

Dutch looks unnerved by the blankness of her voice.  “Okay?  So?”

“If you need more you set up separate systems, but they’re all the same size, they all hold the same amount of charge--”

“ _So?_ ”

“Three batteries this size charge a KMG,” says Julie, and remembers scrolling through notes, endless plans for Kane Co’s hundreds of bots.  “...Two of them run an _ultra-golem_.”

Utter, frozen silence falls.

“If…” Julie’s voice shakes on the words, no matter how hard she tries to keep it steady.  “If Kane turns those on…”

“We’re dead,” Chuck finishes, almost deadpan with terror.  “We’re so dead.”

\--

They go out to Antonio’s after that.  Not because any of them are particularly hungry, but if you might die tomorrow, you might as well have pizza for every possible meal.  They get one with everything on it.  Antonio flat-out refuses to take payment for it, waving away Dutch’s _“IOU repairs”_ ticket with an impassioned speech about their efforts in midtown yesterday.

“You know,” says Dutch, as Antonio walks away from their table, “I always kinda thought I’d die from breathin’ in too much paint or somethin’.”

“I was-- _hahaha!_ \--I was always _positive_ I was gonna die in Mutt,” says Chuck, fiddling with the scarf around his neck.  Julie kept an eye on him on the drive over, anticipating an eventual emotional breakdown, but he just sounds kind of numb and tired.

“Pretty sure we were all thinkin’ that,” says Texas dismissively.  “Man, if Texas isn’t killed by a mutant shark it’s gonna be a total let-down!”

“No one’s going to _die!_ ” says Julie.  “I--I have more files to go through.  There could be more info in there, about how to get them off, or…something.”

“Sure,” says Dutch, with a weird kind of half-smile.  “Sounds good.  Before that, though, I wanna hear more about this mutant shark thing.  How long you been waitin’ on that, Tex?”

They pass the rest of the meal suggesting more and more dramatic death scenarios for Texas.  It doesn’t kill the tension, but it seems to keep it from getting too much worse.  Really, it’s the best they could hope for in the circumstances.

“No no no,” says Chuck, waving his hands as Texas takes his customary last slice of pizza, “androids don’t _work_ like that, okay?  They literally _can’t_ be rabid and even if they could be, they wouldn’t make you _robo-rabid_ if they bit you!”

Texas raises an unimpressed eyebrows.  “Uh-huh.  And you know this how?”

“Common sense!”

“Lame.”

“Oh--oh yeah?  Well, joke’s on you, science is never l--”

“It’s the Burners!”

The words break the quiet hum of noise like a gunshot--all four Burners flinch for their weapons, but it’s just a little girl, tugging away from her mother’s hand to run up to them.  She doesn’t look any older than seven or eight.  

“Kachaw,” says Texas, in tones of cautious greeting.

“Hi there,” says Julie, and bends down to the girl’s eye-level, smiling.  “You...know us?”

“You broke Kane’s big robot!” the girl chirps.  “It didn’t get our house but it got the one next door and now the neighbors live in mama’s old room.”

“Honey--” her mother hurries up after her, not quite glancing at any of the Burners.  “--leave them alone, they’re trying to eat.”

“No no, it’s okay!”  Julie holds out a hand--the woman stares at it for a second, and then takes it cautiously and gives it a slightly nervous shake.  “Nice to meet you.”  And then, to the little girl again, “You stayed and watched his big robot come down?  You must be really brave, huh?”

The girl puffs up her chest.  “Yeah!  Just like Mike Chilton!”

Julie’s smile falls for a second, and then comes back--smaller and sadder.

“Yeah...” she repeats softly.  “...Just like Mike.”

“Is he here?”  the little girl looks around, excited--Texas has turned away, shoulders hunched.  Chuck huddles miserably in on himself, Dutch stands frozen, silent.  “Where’d he go?”

“He…”  Julie stops, lost--starts again, “...he’s on an adventure right now.  He’s always running off on his own to do stuff.”

“When’s he gonna come back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where’d he go?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Why--”

“We don’t know.”  Julie stands up, not quite looking at the girl or her mom.  The woman is watching her with a sort of dawning realization in her eyes--looking at the extra seat in the middle of their row, at the shadows under everyone’s eyes and the misery in their faces.  “...Sorry.  We don’t know.”

“...Come on, honey,” says the girl’s mother, and takes her hand.  

“He’ll come back soon,” the little girl says confidently, as she’s led away, and Julie turns her back and rubs her burning eyes with shaking fingers.  “He’ll be right back to help us.  That’s what it says on the wall.”

_“Honey…”_

“Hold up, what wall?” says Dutch.

“The wall in midtown?” says the girl, in that _how-can-you-not-know-this_ voice little kids sometimes use.  “With the big painting--”

At this point, the mother seems to decide that enough is enough and scoops the girl bodily into her arms, shooting the Burners one last apologetic look before heading for the door.

“...So,” says Julie after a moment, “are we gonna check that out, or…?”

“A wall with a big painting?” says Texas, glancing sidelong at Dutch.  “You think this guy’s gonna give us a choice?”

“I wanna see it too,” Chuck pipes up.  “Did she say it said something about Mike?”

“Sounds like it.”  Julie is already packing their last pieces of pizza into a to-go box, pushing her chair back.  “Let’s go find out.”

Midtown is still a mess, but the rubble has been pulled to the sides of the road and the demolished buildings are cleaned out.  Every possession of the former inhabitants that could be saved has been picked up and returned.  At the edge of the destruction, standing like a pillar, there’s a single half-ruined building that’s miraculously almost intact.  Its facade is in pieces, with gaping holes opening onto what used to be somebody’s home, but it’s still standing.

On the side, one of Motorcity’s many street writers has been hard at work painting a twenty-foot tall mural. The artist’s style is angular, full of sharp shapes, but not stylized beyond the point of recognition.  Chuck gapes up at it, pulling his hair back for a better look.

“That’s…”

“ _Mike,_ ” says Julie, her stomach twisting.

It is Mike, his back to the viewer, head turned back just far enough to show a glimpse of an eye, the corner of his smile.  The silhouette, the hair, the burning orange lines on his jacket, are unmistakeable.  His right hand raises his staff high above his head; one of the blades trails blue-green fire, painstakingly airbrushed in the shape of the Burner logo’s tail.

“It’s not just one artist,” says Dutch quietly.  “Look.”

He points to the bottom of the wall, where someone’s added in a green dog with fierce, wild eyes at Mike’s feet, snarling and drooling.  Then there’s text, gleaming neon-bright, wrapping around both of them-- _HE’S COMING HOME, WE BELIEVE IN MIKE, SAVE MOTORCITY_ \--and at the top, above Mike, written as large as the space allowed, the defiant words _LIVE FREE_.

“Most writers wouldn’t be cool with someone paintin’ over their stuff like that,” says Dutch.  “This is more than I’ve ever seen in one place.”

Julie smiles tightly, feeling her throat constrict.  “...I guess this is special.”

“Needs more dragons,” Texas observes.  “Dutch, you wanna get on that?”

“Wh--no!”  Dutch pauses, squinting up at the graffiti with that look on his face--the _I’m envisioning it now_ look.  “...Maybe.”

“I’m just glad we’re not the only ones thinking about Mike,” says Chuck, who’s still staring, awestruck, up at Mike’s painted face.  “I just wish we could _tell_ them something…”

Julie wasn’t expecting the sudden, visceral stab of pain that follows those words, or the way it makes her open her mouth and say, “I--I have something to tell you guys.”

“Yeah?” says Texas, turning eagerly to look at her.  “‘Bout time, Shelly!  We were startin’ to--”

“Blue is Mike.”

God--she’d meant to soften the blow a little, give a little background, lead up to it, but by now that would just have been torture.  Julie forces herself to meet their eyes, even though the only thing she wants to do is stare down at her boots.  Or run away.  Or maybe throw up.  Possibly all of the above.

“Y--what…?” says Chuck weakly.  “J...what?”

“Mike is Blue,” says Julie, and then, feeling the need to explain, to justify, to do anything that’ll stop them from _looking_ at her like that.  “He’s--he’s under Kane’s control somehow.  He can’t help it, Kane has some kind of technology that--”

“No,” says Chuck.

“I’ve _seen_ him,” says Julie, her eyes starting to water.  “You have to--”

“What are you talking about?”  Dutch’s voice is flat, like he’s trying to sound calm, but his whole body is drawn up tense.  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know!  I know it doesn’t, but I’ve _seen--_ ”

“When?”  Texas looks confused, and that’s almost worse than the way the other two are staring at her.  Almost.  “You saw Mike?  Where?!  Let’s go get him!”

“I don’t know what Kane did to him,” Julie says desperately.  “I tried to bring him down here, I was going to call you, but--”

“I don’t believe this,” Chuck says, and then again, louder, “I don’t freaking believe this!  That’s not _funny_!”

“It’s not a joke!”

“No, it’s not,” Dutch says sharply.  “Why would you even say that?!”

The mural of Mike smiles down at them, and Julie thinks about Mike’s bright, eager, innocent grin and the empty distance of his eyes and tries again, “I told you, he doesn’t have a choice, there’s some kind of implant on the back of his neck and it’s forcing him to follow Kane’s orders somehow!  Think about it, when he caught you he wouldn’t let Red hurt you--”

“Blue put _these_ on us!”  Chuck says shrilly, and his fingers drag at the collar around his neck, leaving fresh, reddened lines over older, half-healed scratches. “He _hurts_ people, he--”

“He _doesn’t have a choice!_ ” Julie shouts over him again, “Mike would never do this if he had any choice, you _know_ - _-_ ”

There’s a rush of warm air and ozone, and then Chuck is pointing his slingshot directly at her face.  Julie stumbles back, eyes wide, reaching for her boomerang on instinct.

“Hey, hey, hey, _guys_ , what’s goin’ on?” shouts Texas, chopping at the air between them with one hand.

“She’s saying Mike is Blue!” Chuck snaps, his voice rising in anger and distress.

“What?  Not cool!”

“I’m not--guys, I wouldn’t lie about this!” Julie looks to Dutch, eyes wide-- _help me_.  “I’ve known for days now, I--”

“But you didn’t tell us,” says Dutch, his brow furrowing.  Julie’s heart sinks; she backs towards her car, glancing back at Chuck’s trembling, white-knuckled hands and the wavering green crosshairs still aimed at her.

“I just wanted...to wait until--”

“Until things got _worse_?” Dutch interrupts, folding his arms.  “‘Cause that’s what they did while you were up in Deluxe, workin’ on this crazy mind-control bullcrap!”

Julie stops backing away at that, betrayal and frustration igniting a fire in her gut.  “I’m _not_ lying and it’s _not_ crazy!  They’re the same person, Mike is Blue, and the sooner you accept--”

Chuck doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even make a sound, but a green plasma bolt punches into Nine Lives’ hood, leaving a black burn mark on the paint.  Julie turns slowly to look at it, and then back to Chuck.  He’s breathing hard, his mouth pulled into a tight, shaky grimace.  His slingshot disassembles even as she turns away, but Julie doesn’t look back.  Someone yells something as she climbs into her car, but she drowns them out by furiously revving the engine and pulls out into what’s left of the road.  Away from the Burners, away from the painting of Mike.

Julie shuts down her comm connection and drives away from everything.


	12. Strong and Bright, Fast and Free.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betrayed and angry, Julie isolates herself from friends and family--everyone but her bodyguard, whose new injuries only worry her more. Alex Harley, having finally learned one secret too many, finds himself standing at the intersection of loyalty and integrity. Mike uses his imagination.

“And then they just--shut me down!”

_“OMG!  That is--the_ worst _.  Really, Julie, just--wow.  Mm-hm,”_ says Claire, and Julie’s heart sinks.  That’s the sound of a best friend who wants to disagree even though they know you’re already upset.

“...You think this is my fault.”

Claire purses her lips for a second, like the words are trying to escape and she wants to hold them in. Then Julie gives her a Look, and Claire breaks down.

_“Okay!  Okay, look, like...I get it!  And I’m on your side!  But, uh...you didn’t tell me either.”_

“What?”

 _“I’m your best friend!”_  Claire picks at her nails.   _“We’re supposed to help each other out with stuff.”_

“You do!  You did, you helped me with that date--”

 _“Uh, yeah,”_ Claire says, _“--but that was just, like, one little thing!  And you didn’t tell me what it was for, and you never called me back after that!  So, like...I am on your side.  But I kinda get why they’re mad.”_

Julie feels her face flush hot.  “I...it could’ve put you in danger!”

 _“Girl, I’m like_ always _in danger!  Y’know how often your dad calls me when you go missing for like...all day?  Pretty much every time!  And he’s_ super _not fun to lie to.  So if I’m gonna lie for you and cover stuff up for you, it kinda hurts that you’re not even telling me what I’m covering up.”_ Claire settles back in her chair and folds her arms, not quite meeting Julie’s eyes.   _“...Things are getting scary down there.  Foxy says--”_

“ _Foxy_ is starting a war!”  Julie says, hurt and embarrassment sharpening her voice shrilly.  “I don’t want you in the middle of it, Claire!  You’re great, and--and I know you’re in danger up here too, but the more of my stupid secrets you know about the more danger you’re in!”

 _“That’s not your call!”_  Claire stands up sharply.   _“Foxy’s trying to keep her people safe!  Just like you are, ‘kay?!  And--you could’ve just told me you knew something dangerous, and I would’ve been like ‘oh that’s okay Jules if you think I don’t need to know’, or whatever, or I could’ve been like ‘omg no you need to tell me right now, who else is gonna have your back’!”_  Her voice breaks a little bit on the words--she dabs at her eyes, sniffs and then straightens her back and raises her chin defiantly.   _“...But you just cut me out.  So...sorry.  I can’t fix your weird...secret-keeping thing.”_

“Claire--”

_“I’m gonna out for a bit, ‘kay?”_

“No, Claire, listen.  I’m really--”

 _“I just need some alone time,”_ Claire says, and turns away.   _“Okay?  I’ll...I’ll call you.”_

The window winks out.  Julie stares at the empty air where it used to be, then buries her face in her pillow and screams over and over again, until it turns into crying.  That doesn’t last, though.  If there’s one thing she’s really learned from all of this, it’s that tears don’t solve anything in the long run.  When she looks up, stone-faced and red-eyed, there’s one text message waiting for her.  It’s from Dutch.

_blue’s back 2day.  tried long-range attax but no good._

Oh, so he felt like he had to send her a message specifically to let her know they’re still trying to hurt Blue even after she _told_ them he’s Mike.  That’s just fantastic.  That’s--

_“Julie-bear?”_

\--just great.

Julie turns to look at her dad’s screen, hating the look of concern on his face.

_“You missed our lesson and I know you’re in your room.  Are you sick? What’s--”_

“Not now, Dad,” Julie grits out, and closes the call.  Just like Claire did to her, she thinks, and for a moment that provides a kind of vicious satisfaction.  But it’s only a moment, and then Julie realizes, in the stillness of her empty room, she has no one left to talk to.

The door hums quietly open and closed behind her.

_“...Miss Julie?”_

Just him.

\--

It may have been just Blue before, but now there’s a forest of missile limos buried in the roads outside the Amazons’ hideout, laser burns left all over the Skylarks’ sleek black Buicks, Weekend Warrior snipers perching on buildings along the Mama’s Boys’ favorite routes.

And ordinary citizens have started to stay indoors, but sometimes even that isn’t enough to keep them safe, to the Burners’ impotent fury.  There are only four of them, and they can’t be everywhere at once, but it seems now like the other gangs are managing just that.  

They haven’t even gotten a clear look at Blue in person since Julie told them her...theory.  Just a shadow that dodges all their attacks and never gets close enough to target.  He may have Deluxe tech, but the way he moves…

Chuck hasn’t been thinking about that.  Has been _trying_ not to think about that, anyway.  But since when has his brain ever done what he wanted, right?

He looks around the empty ruin of what used to be somebody’s living room, sighs heavily, and turns on his comm.

“No casualties,” he says, and clambers awkwardly out through the gaping hole in the wall of an apartment building.  So far it’s been no casualties every time, but there’s nobody to step in and stop this the way Tennie and the Cablers did last time, and everyone’s on tenterhooks waiting for the worst to happen.

“ _Thanks for helpin’ out, Chuck,_ ” says Dutch’s voice in his ear as Chuck climbs uneasily back into Blonde Thunder.   _“Now things are gettin’ bad--”_ _  
_ “Now that Julie’s gone, you mean,” Chuck mutters miserably, and reaches out to his ignition, fingers tapping reluctant and jittery at the keys.

 _“Didn’t say that,”_ mutters Dutch, frustration roughening his lowered voice.  There’s a moment of silence, and then he seems to realize how he sounded and says, _“I was just...what I mean is, if Kane tried to move now it wouldn’t be like last time.  We need every hand on a steering wheel.  So thanks.”_

“Uh, yeah,” says Chuck, grimacing at his own wheel.  “Hey, I’ll talk to you later...gotta concentrate on getting home.”

 _“Whatever you need, man,”_ says Dutch, and then, with a touch of his old humor, _“Just try to push thirty on the way there, alright?  There aren’t any grannies on the streets right now.”_

“ _Ha, ha,_ ” says Chuck pointedly, and closes the connection.

On the way back to headquarters he averages forty-five.

\--

It’s still insanely weird to see Mike Chilton, in Kane Co. colors, standing in her Kane Co. pod against the vast backdrop of Deluxe.  Julie sits up quickly, scrubbing at her face, trying to pull herself together; Mike has his helmet off already, and he looks worried.

“Hey, Cowboy,” she says, and hates how choked and thick her voice sounds.   _Heard you’ve been busy_ , her brain supplies unhelpfully.  “...What’s up?”

“That’s what I was gonna ask,” he says, and settles down on the bed with a pained huff and a wince.  “Your face looks worse than mine.”

“I’m okay.”

Mike gives her that look that’s all wide, worried eyes and earnest frowning. “Were...you were crying.  That’s not…” he trails off--his mouth twists painfully.  “...I don’t like seeing you like this,” he says finally.  “Can I fix it?”

Julie has to laugh.  “No,” she says, and swings her legs over the side of the bed, sucking in a deep breath as she straightens her aching spine.  “No, you can’t fix this one.  It’s okay, Mike.  Don’t worry about it.”

Mike relaxes a little, but he still looks unhappy.  Julie pats his shoulder gently, and then shakes her hair back out of her face and gets up off the bed.  She’s halfway across the room toward her closet when the sound of a soft, strangled groan stops her dead.  She turns back to see Mike holding his side, frozen in a pained grimace halfway through the process of standing up.

“What’s wrong?”

Mike immediately straightens up--it forces another pained noise out of him, but he ignores the pain and even tries to smile at her, like he can pretend he’s not hurting.  “Nothing,” he says quickly.  “Don’t worry about it, Jules.”

“Let me see.”

Mike snorts.  Julie whaps him on the arm.  “I’m serious!  Are you hurt?”

“I had a fight,” he says.  “With the Burners.  I--didn’t see you there.  Shouldn’t you have--”

For a second, his expression of mild contentment spasms--Julie recognizes the feedback loop when she sees it, and hastily reaches down and yanks at the hem of his uniform.  Mike blinks and laughs, distracted, pushing her hands away.  

“Whoa there, easy--”

“Mike, _show me_.”

And he obeys, just like that.  The jacket gives him some trouble--he winces when he has to raise one arm, and then again when he twists to pull the uniform off.  Then he lifts his tanktop and Julie hisses softly in sympathy.  There’s a patchwork of colorful bruised welts covering his left ribs and arm in the distinctive concentric-circle pattern of Whiptail’s sonic blast.  Dutch obviously didn’t miss his shots nearly as often as he thought.

“...These look bad,” Julie says, and reaches out--Mike grimaces as her fingers touch his battered side, but doesn’t move to pull away.  “Mike, you should get these taken care of.”

“Come on,” he says, and grins.  “--It’s not like I’m bleeding.  Red’s done way worse when--” and he stops with a sharp inhale, like whatever he’s remembering still hurts.  “I’m fine, Ju--Miss Julie.” He gives her a slightly guilty glance, just like every time he accidentally calls her something ‘unauthorized’.  Julie bites her tongue and...controls herself.   _Red’s done worse._  Mike’s broken nose, black eyes and split lip are only just now fading.

“Well you should still get it looked at,” she says, and wonders if there’s any way she could get Red thrown off the tower.  Maybe if she went on a date with him, she thinks sardonically, and then shudders at the thought.

“Mister Kane doesn’t want me wasting company resources unless I’m seriously injured,” Mike says earnestly.  “I can handle it.”

Julie opens her mouth to respond, to _order_ him to go and get treated, maybe just to let out the frustrated curses building up in her chest, but Mike stands suddenly straighter and drops his shirt again, head cocked to one side, listening to something she can’t hear.  

“...I’ve gotta go,” he says, and raises a hand to his comm.  “--Yes sir.  On my way.”

“Mike--”

Mike is already tucking his shirt in, pulling his jacket back in order--he looks up and smiles, bright and curious, and Julie’s chest hurts.

“Never mind,” she says, and touches the shoulder that’s not bruised as he starts to reach for his helmet.  “Just--come back here when you’re done, okay?  I have some standard-issue pain patches you can use.”

“That’s wasting Kane Co. res--”

“That’s for me to decide,” Julie says firmly, and Mike blinks and then ducks his head.

“Sorry, Miss Julie.”

“Mike--”

“I have to go, Jules.”

And just like that, he turns and strides out the door.  Julie follows, stands in the hallway and watches him go, and for the first time in a long time she feels her throat knot and her eyes burn.  Mike’s figure swims as he walks away from her, back straight and head held high.

He’s still limping.  It was just a couple of weeks ago Julie had no idea about any of this--a few days ago, she thought they were going to break into prison, save Mike from her dad, bring him home and make everything okay again.  But all those days have done is make things more complicated and messy and _painful._

“.. _.You_ know _who he is_.”

Julie jumps and whips around at the light, hoarse snarl of a voice, and then flinches away as Red stares impassively back at her.  She didn’t hear him come up behind her.  When she glances back, Mike is gone, and with him goes the moment of agony that almost brought her to tears.  When she looks back at Red, her mask is back; protection doubling as a weapon.

“Oh--yeah, I _guess_ ,” she says, and giggles.  It’s gratifying to see his shoulders tighten at the sound.

 _“You can drop the_ act _.  Good Kane Co. girls don’t walk around with stray mutts on a leash.”_

 _You probably think that sounds menacing,_ Julie thinks, and widens her eyes innocently, giving a chagrined little giggle.  “What?”  She says, and imagines Claire when Julie teases her.  Roll the eyes, flap a hand like you’re shooing the suggestion away…  “Come on, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Red cocks his head on one side, and looking at him, Julie realizes she can’t find her reflection in the facade of his helmet, the way she can with Mike’s

“ _Very convincing,”_ he says finally, dripping sarcasm.  “ _I’m sure you’re enjoying yourself, but that’s not a man.”_ The mask tilts down a little, and Julie can’t see any hint of an expression but a sudden chill runs down her spine.  “... _That’s an_ animal.”

“Oh, I think you’re being too hard on Blue,” says Julie, and with an effort she manages to make the words sound giggly and flustered instead of sharp and angry.   _Mike’s worth a thousand of you, you monster._ “He takes pretty good care of me!  As my bodyguard, I mean!”

Red’s mask shows no emotion, but Julie can almost feel the sneer.  She doesn’t know why her bubbly intern persona bothers him so much, but this is the only kind of revenge she can get, for now.  So she widens her eyes, innocent and embarrassed, and giggles as loud as she can.

“I mean, sure, Mike Chilton’s a _bad guy_ ,” she says, and for all the words come out innocent, she feels like somehow she’s fighting.  And she’s _winning_.  “It’s not like I...he’s okay, I mean.  Mr. Kane has told me all the _bad, bad_ things he’s done, but he’s always nice to me!”

“ _He is not_ nice.”

“And he’s so handsome,” Julie continues, and is gratified to see Red give a disgusted sort of shudder.  She presses on relentlessly.  “--I mean, it’s kind of exciting, isn’t it?  How he used to be a--”

“ _God,_ shut up,” hisses Red, and turns on his heel.  “ _Chilton deserves everything he’s getting.  I just wish I’d finished him off while I had the chance._ ”

For a second, Julie is so angry she can’t breathe.  Red is stalking away from her, and he _hurt_ Mike when Mike couldn’t fight back, and--  

“Take off your helmet.”

Red stops.  Turns back slowly.

 _“Why_.”

Calm.  Controlled.

“...Because,” says Julie, “this company is going to belong to me.  And you belong to this company.”

_“Just because Chilton does everything you want--”_

“You’re just a _guy_ ,” Julie interrupts suddenly, struck by the thought.   “So is M--Mike Chilton.  Blue.  He’s not a--a rabid dog, and you’re not some super-powered monster.  You’re just _acting_ like one, talking about finishing him off and stuff!  When was the last time you acted like a normal human being?  Why can’t you just show me _one normal thing_ \--”

 _“I’m_ not _normal,”_ says Red, low and dangerous.  He doesn’t take a step towards her, but Julie feels the threat behind the words, the strength of belief behind them.   _“And I’ll prove it if you keep pushing, Kane.”_

Something in Julie snaps.  Before she can think, she’s marched up to Red, hands in tight fists at her sides.  “Okay!  Do it!  You think I couldn’t take you?  You don’t know what I’m capable of!  You think you can just hurt people and get away with--”

 _“That’s more like it,”_ he says, cutting her off, and there’s something almost like a smile in his voice.   _“_ There _you are.”_

Julie freezes, enraged and confused, and Red freezes too; the faint, hissing sound of his breath cuts off for a silent second, and then he turns away abruptly, walking away from her at speed.

Julie doesn’t stop him this time.  It’s a strange, sickening echo, watching him walk away.  Mike in one direction, head held high, _for Mister Kane!_ And Red in the other, shoulders hunched and head down, following his own brutal agenda.  

At least the fury and hatred she feels for Red don’t make her eyes prickle with tears.

She can’t go to the hideout, but she can’t stay in Kane Co. tower.  Julie returns to her pod, locks the door, and slides out of her dock in the tower’s side, thankfully uninterrupted by any calls from Claire or her dad.  Most of the pods are docked right now and she has the sky mostly to herself as she soars past the familiar skyscrapers toward the distant border of the city, until Kane Co. tower is small in the distance.  There are less buildings out here; more great, gaping vents in the dome, leading down into Motorcity darkness.

She isn’t expecting the comm window that pops up next to her, and almost waves one hand to shut it down before whoever’s calling her can say anything.  Then the pixellated video coalesces into a face, and Julie relaxes, letting her hand drop back to her side.

“Hey, Jacob.”

“ _The boys told me what you said._ ”

She almost forgot about the fight with the other Burners, after all the drama with Red.  Julie straightens up, stung by the reminder and ready to defend herself again.  “I’m telling the truth!  I’ve seen his face--”

“ _Yeah, and you asked about my old implant,_ ” Jacob cuts over her.  “ _And I asked you ‘_ do you figure Kane got it working again’.”

“He did--he has.”

“ _So why didn’t you_ say so?!”

Jacob slams a knotted fist against the table.  Julie jumps, startled and hurt--Jacob isn’t glaring at her like her dad would, though.  His head is bowed, one hand is pressed over his eyes.  For a long second he doesn’t say anything else.  Then he sniffs hard, sits up and folds his arms.  He looks...tired.

“I’m sorry,” says Julie.

“ _You oughta be,_ ” Jacob says, but he doesn’t sound angry anymore, not really.  His voice is rough, exhausted.  “ _Five brains are better than one, we coulda been working on this together this whole time.”_

“I didn’t want to tell anybody, not without... _proof,_ without anything we could do to help!”  Julie crosses her arms.  “...And it looks like I was right.  Did they call me crazy when they talked to you, or did they just say ‘desperate’?”

 _“Didn’t say any’a that,”_ says Jacob, shrugging.   _“Weren’t angry at you so much as scared.”_

“Well, they have a weird way of showing it,” mumbles Julie, but she can’t bring herself to put any feeling into the words--it was her own fear that got her into this situation, after all.  “...Are they okay?”

Jacob’s face tells her everything she needs to know.  Julie groans and slumps down on her bed.  

“ _So he’s got it working again,_ ” says Jacob.  “ _Thought Kane trashed all my plans a long time ago.”_

“There’s a new guy in R&D,” says Julie, infinitely relieved to finally have somebody to talk to.  “He must have fixed the conductivity problem you were talking about.  Mike’s got something on the back of his neck, he won’t let me near it.”

“ _I’m tellin’ you right now,_ ” Jacob growls, “-- _if he thinks he can just hurt my kid like--_ ”

Julie isn’t in the mood to hear another rant about _“what I’d do to Kane_ ”.  “Let’s focus on getting Mike back,” she says.  “He’ll follow orders, but only if Kane hasn’t given him one that contradicts it, and I...I can’t get him into Motorcity.  He gets...really upset.”

“ _Sounds about right,”_ says Jacob grimly.  “ _I’m tellin’ you, Kane never saw a new piece of tech he didn’t turn into somethin’ awful.”_  And then, before Julie can answer that, “ _...new kid, you said?_ ”

“Yeah, Alex Harley?  I think he made the collars too.”

 _“Never heard of him,_ ” says Jacob.   _“Those collars ain’t got a thing to do with me._ ”

“Okay,” says Julie.  “So, then…”

_“Yeah?”_

Julie breathes out through her nose, tightens her lips.

 _“Go ahead,”_ says Jacob, and to her surprise there’s a smile in his gruff voice.   _“You kids never tell me nothin’.  Should talk to me more, keep me in the loop.”_

Julie feels her eyes prickle suddenly at the words and she nods, blinking rapidly, trying to stay businesslike.  “Uh, yeah!  Right.  I was just gonna ask, what do you think I should do now?”

 _“Huh.”_ Jacob scratches his cheek, combing his skinny fingers absently through his sideburns.   _“Well, we know what’s up with Mike now.  Bring that Harley kid’s files with you next time you come down here.”_

“Next time I--?”

 _“You_ are _comin’ back, right?”_ says Jacob sharply, the wrinkles on his forehead deepening.   _“Jumpin’ Jehosaphat, you think the guys don’t miss ya?  They got some apologizin’ to do and sooner’s better than later.”_

Julie huffs out a dry laugh.  “You think?”

_“Hey now, missy, they’re not the only ones who need to apologize.  Just get down here when you can.  But before that, I was wondering…”_

“Yeah?”

_“Well, you said you think Harley designed those collars too, right?  Well, we still need a way to get ‘em off.”_

\--

Alex Harley is worried.  To be fair, this isn’t a new thing.  That’s basically what he’s been doing for several weeks now: worrying and working and stressing and working and occasionally panicking trying not to think too hard about what’s happening around him.

And then his computing system reported that someone had accessed files without his permission.  At first Alex thought it was just some routine Kane Co. check, which would have been fine.  He has nothing to hide from the company, or even its CEO (though there are certainly _some_ things Alex wouldn’t say to Mister Kane’s face).

But then he remembered seeing similar alerts last year, every time the Burners took information from Kane Co.’s system.  And then he thought about Julie, and the way she wanted to know whether he had his own workstation in R&D, and everything shifted into perfect clarity.

Alex was ready to make the report and send it directly to Mister Kane like a good Kane Co. employee, and then common sense kicked in.  Common sense pointed out Kane Co.’s record of unfortunate...terminations, and painted him an unnecessarily vivid image of what might happen to the person who sent Mister Kane a message like that.

Mister Kane couldn’t have known what a risky move it would be to let his brainwashed soldier spend so much time around Julie--and it’s definitely not because Julie is an _innocent little intern_ and Mike is a dangerous criminal.  Alex has seen how Mike reacts to mentions of the Burners, to having them in front of him during missions, and he can only imagine how many times the words “it hurts” go through Mike’s mind when he’s with Julie.  

Mister Kane couldn’t possibly have known that, though.  A Burner, high up in Management, right under his nose?  Alex would never have believed it if he didn’t have the evidence laid out for him.  A Burner, with...dark red hair, and sharp, dark eyes, whom Mister Kane appointed a supersoldier to protect.

Sometimes the thought of exactly how much classified information Alex knows makes him physically sick to his stomach.  

So.  Kane is forcing Mike Chilton (Mike Chilton, leader of the Burners, hero of Motorcity) to fight the Burners and destroy Motorcity.  Instead of following Alex’s gradual acclimatization program and avoiding exposure to Mike’s--Chilton’s--to his original life, Mister Kane chose to send him down to Motorcity every few days, constantly treat him like a failure instead of providing positive reinforcement, and _assign him to protect an undercover Burner._

This can’t possibly end well.  But Alex is nothing if he’s not a scientist, and it is _his_ invention being put to the test.  As overwhelming as the whole mess of Burners and secrets and supersoldiers is, there’s still a persistent spark of curiosity that pushes at the back of his mind.  This is a prototype, and the failure of a first prototype is _crucial_ and...honestly, if he’s completely honest with himself, he’s kind of worried.  About Mike.  

Harley pushes that thought down as deep as he can, and shoves piles of half-finished projects off his desk to clear his screen. Time to gather more data.

It’s not hard to find Mike.  He’s wearing a suit Alex designed, after all.  It would be pretty remiss of him to make a high-tech piece of equipment like that and not put a beacon in it so he can find it again if something happens.  Mike is headed upstairs from somewhere low down on the tower, moving steadily toward the management levels.  There’s no question of where he’s going up there; if Alex is going to catch him before he gets to Mister Kane’s office, he’s going to have to move fast.

Mike is marching steadily down the hallway outside Kane’s office by the time Alex catches up with him.  He must somehow not hear Alex’s footsteps as he hurries up the hallway in Mike’s wake, because when Alex clears his throat Mike whips around with his fists up.  Alex stumbles back, startled, and Mike relaxes and half-laughs.

“Please don’t hit me,” says Alex before he can think about it.  His voice comes out much higher-pitched than he really intended.  

“ _I only did that because Mister Kane told me to_ ,” says Mike cheerfully.  “ _What’s up?_ ”

“Oh.  Uh…”  Okay.  Which probably means, since Kane isn’t here right now, that Mike isn’t going to haul off and punch anybody without orders.  Alex relaxes just a little bit--glances past Mike at the door to the office.  No sign of Kane.  “Well, I was just wondering…it’s just, you’re Mike Chilton.”

Mike snorts, confused but laughing.  “ _Uh...Yeah?  I know._ ”

Okay, yes, that could’ve been better phrased.  Alex tries again.  “You...I mean, while you’ve been protecting...Julie, has anything, uh, hurt you?  Like we talked about earlier, when y--”

 _“No,”_ says Mike distantly.  Alex isn’t sure he was even listening--he went stiff about halfway through the question.  Alex considers repeating it, but just the thought of pushing his luck any further makes him break out in a cold sweat.

Instead he laughs an awkward, sickly-sounding laugh and says, “Well, it’s...not important.  I just found something on my computer and…  Oh, that reminds me!”

This is good, he’d totally forgotten he was going to do this and it gives him an excuse for being here.  Smiling in relief, he says, “You only got to use three of the collars I made, right?”  Mike nods and Alex continues quickly, “Well, I could use the last one back if you...didn’t have any more plans for it…”

Even as Alex says it, he kind of hates himself.  He doesn’t want Mike reverting right here and now, for god’s sake, and he also doesn’t want Mike to start getting any ideas about putting that last collar on Julie.  The thought alone is nausea-inducing.

 _What have I gotten myself into?_ Alex thinks dully, dragging a hand down his face.

_What have I done?_

And then Mike says, _“Alright!”_ and pulls the last sleek white collar from his pocket.  Alex takes it from him, practically melting in relief, and blurts out something like a goodbye before hurrying off in the opposite direction.

He hasn’t even stowed the collar in his own pocket before Julie appears around a corner with a singularly terrifying expression of determination on her face.  Before today, Alex would’ve missed how adeptly she changes it to pleasant surprise.

“Alex!”

“J--Julie.”   _Put away the collar, put it away--_ “What are you doing here?”

Oh, god, she definitely saw it.  Alex tries not to think about what she must think of him now--of what she might have found out from his files.

“Uh--Alex...wh...what’s that?”

Alex tries to look innocent as his gaze drops to the collar in his hand, but he’s afraid he’s not as good at this stuff as she is.  “Oh, this!  It’s--it’s nothing.  Just a little...project of mine?”

“Right,” says Julie, and as she pauses Alex takes the opportunity to edge around her, keeping his distance all the while.  He hasn’t forgotten what happened the last time he got close to her, and even he doesn’t know where all the Kane Co. security cameras are.

He really expects her to say something before he leaves--ask if she can see the collar, or whether she can visit him in R&D sometimes, try to manipulate him again.  But she doesn’t, and that’s worse, because Alex still really likes Julie.  And it would’ve been so much easier not to if she’d just acted like a heartless Burner super-spy.

Instead he hears a small, miserable voice behind him say “Bye.”

Alex doesn’t turn around.

\--

Mike walks away from Alex and toward  Mister Kane’s office as quickly as he can, and thinks.  Alex is a weird dude, but he’s a pretty good guy!  Really good. Julie (Miss Julie) is so good too.  Her orders feel like Mister Kane’s, doing what she says feels so good and right, but she smiles at him.  She’s not angry at him, and Mike likes her a lot.  He’s glad he doesn’t have to tell anybody about her secret.  

Some part of him that knows _Burners are bad, Burners need to be captured, detained, stop the Burners._ That part of him shudders at the thought that he’s taking orders from one of the enemy--but it’s Miss Julie.  She’s _Mister Kane’s daughter, and what would the others say if they--_

And something clamps down hard on that train of thought, crushing it to near non-existence as he steps through the door, so that Mike can only remember the feeling of having it.  It wasn’t a good feeling.  It hurts.

To distract himself from that more than anything, he actually jogs the distance from the door to Mister Kane’s desk, pleased by how efficiently his body responds these days.  He’s a fast healer.  He’s going to do his best.  It doesn’t hurt.

“You wanted to speak to me, sir?” Mike asks, raising one gloved hand in a steady salute.

“I did,” says Mister Kane.  He sounds serious.  Mike resolves to be extra attentive.  He wishes, suddenly, that the back of his neck would stop itching.  When did it start itching?

“As you were, Commander.”

Mister Kane’s back is still turned towards Mike, and Mike guiltily takes the opportunity to scratch his neck.  It comes dangerously close to disobeying orders, but he isn’t touching the implant, just the skin around it, and it _itches so much--_ the dull polymer seam of his glove isn’t enough to take the edge off the burning.  He pulls the glove off and digs his nails in, under the collar of his suit and the back of his helmet.

Mister Kane turns around.  Mike stands to attention quickly, folding his hands behind his back to hide his ungloved hand.  Mister Kane doesn’t look like he’d like it if he found out Mike was removing equipment without permission.  Mike knows that hard, watchful look.

“It’s time to stop playing games with that sewer-trash,” says Mister Kane.  “Time for you to stop holding back, Commander.”

Mike wants to tell him, tell him he wasn’t holding back, that he’s been doing his best, but...some part of him buried deep down knows it’s not the truth.  There’s something knotted up in him, it makes him pull punches and miss openings.  Makes him less efficient, less destructive.  Mister Kane is right.  Mister Kane is always right.

“What do you want me to do, sir?”

Mister Kane doesn’t answer for a while.  Mike stands to attention and feels his ribs ache to the pound of his heart.  

“...I want you to _break_ the Burners.”

The air is thick and hot and hard to breathe.  Mike stares ahead, frozen.  Why are those words such a shock?  It’s been his mission, right?  Stop the Burners--

_Break them._

It hurts.  It _hurts_ Mike needs more orders to stop it hurting, to stop thinking.  Just follow your orders.

“H--how, sir?”

Mister Kane rolls his eyes, pulling up a couple of new screens.  “Commander, listen closely; the last time I told you to capture them, you _failed_.  This time you’ll keep that from happening, do you understand?”

“I understand,” says Mike.  His mouth tastes like acid.  “I’ll--knock them out, sir.  They shouldn’t be hard to capture if--”

Mister Kane just barely turns, not quite looking back.  “...But I didn’t tell you to capture them, did I?”

“No, sir.  Break them, sir.  How, sir?”

“Just stop them from doing what they do best,” says Mister Kane, slow and impatient.  “Use your imagination, Commander.”

An order.

What they do best.

The fist-fighter, loud and proud and fierce defending his friends he’d--his arms, legs, major bones, a shockwave at close quarters might break a leg.  He might keep trying, Texas is stubborn that way, so--

Mike stares straight ahead, and hears his breath rush in and out in the distance, fast and harsh.  His brain keeps going, spooling out strategies and tactics.  Texas would--the--he’d be the hardest to take out, but the others.  The.  The others make...things, beautiful things, neon paintings and--

A concussion, that would stop him pulling out any tricks.  Dutch is too good at thinking on the run, at creative solutions, problem-solving in the field, _bounce his head on the concrete._  

Mike is distantly aware that he might be about to throw up.  He swallows hard, because he doesn’t want to throw up in his helmet.  That would be bad.  That would hurt.  That would be bad.  

And Julie and Miss Julie and Chuck and Julie, they need their hands.  They couldn’t stop Mister Kane, if they had--if they were--if Mike broke--

“Commander,” says Mister Kane.

Mike’s throat is burning.  Chuck has implants, his arms would break easiest at the elbows, dislocate at the shoulders, no slingshot when he can’t lift his arms and Mike can imagine how he would sound screaming.  Julie is small is thin is delicate and strong and _important_ and her wrists and hands would--

The sickness is growing, eating away at the peaceful haze of Kane Co white in Mike’s head, growing into a cold, roaring emptiness.   _Break them._  Complete the mission.   _Hurt them._  Make him proud.   _It hurts._

Everything is wrong.  Everything is wrong and there’s no air and he’s going to throw up--Mike reaches up desperately, scrabbles for a second at the seam of his collar and his helmet and then tears it away and sucks in air, backing away.  Cold.  Everything is bright and white.  Mister Kane is Kane is Mister Kane is in front of him watching.  A hand twitches to make a fist, straightens to salute.  

“Commander Chilton.”

Mike reaches up to the back of his neck with his ungloved hand and finds cold metal.  Digs his nails in.  Pulls _._

There’s not a lot of blood, which is kind of surprising considering how bad it hurts for a second. A burning jolt rattles along his spine and up his arm, and then the metal clatters away on the ground.  He stares at the shaking hand that touched the implant, feeling his world starting to unravel, to change.  He doesn’t know anymore, doesn’t _know_ \--

Kane watches him expressionlessly.  Mike hates him.  Would do anything for him.  Loves him like a mentor, a god, a _father_.  Wants to hit him until he can’t talk any more.  It hurts.

“Commander Chilton, explain yourself.”

“It hurts,” says Mike, “--I don’t want.  That’s not.  Who I am.”   _Mike,_ says Julie in his head--Julie, Miss Julie, whose orders are always kind, Miss Julie the _Burner_ \-- _Mike, come back here when you’re done…_ but he thinks he won’t be following that order this time and Kane is still watching him.  Can’t disappoint Mister Kane whose orders are so right.  Kane, Mister Kane, who does what’s best for Deluxe and Mike loves Deluxe.   _I solemnly swear loyalty to Deluxe--_

_Down here we have a saying._

“Commander Chilton--”

_No._

“Stop,” Mike says, backing away, dizzy and half-staggering, trying to remember.  “Stop calling me that!  I’m not--I’m Mike Chilton, and I--”

“You belong in De--”

“No!” Mike shouts, hands forming fists.  Something is roaring in him, bright and strong, fast and free.  “That’s wrong, I’m _\--_ I’m Mike Chilton and I belong--I _belong_ in Motorcity!”

And that’s it; instantly, as he says the word, there’s the sensation of something shattering, and the sensation of something coming back together.  He remembers with fresh clarity every order he carried out, every terrible thing he did to his home and his friends, but then also--he _remembers_ his home and his friends-- _his friends_ \--

The collars.

“What did you do?!”  The glove he took off is still in his clenched left hand and Mike pulls it on, hating the feeling of the fabric, hating how reassuring it is to feel the prickle crawl up his arms.  “What are those collars?  What did you do to my friends?”

“Funny you should ask,” says Kane, and dread closes like metal bands around Mike’s gut; Kane should look angry.  He should be shouting, or fighting, or at the very least frowning.  But he’s _smiling_.

“I thought this might happen,” he says.  “I wanted to keep your Burner friends here as a failsafe, but it doesn’t matter...you put the collars on them.”

Mike freezes for a second, feeling ice rush down his spine, then bristles, pushing past the horror.  “What do they do?  What did you do?!”

“ _I_ didn’t do anything,” says Kane.  “You did.”

Another rush of memories batters at Mike; scattered memories of Julie’s eyes wide with horror, Texas on the ground in cuffs, Dutch yelling in pain, the pure terror in Chuck’s face when Mike reached for him with the collar in his hands.  Mike raises his glowing fists, but he doesn’t move to attack.  Can barely imagine moving at all.  

“But since you’re so curious,” Kane continues, “...maybe it’s time for a demonstration.”

He pulls something out of his pocket--small and sleek, some kind of KaneTech controller--and presses a button.

There’s a single moment when Mike thinks nothing’s going to happen, and then the collar--his own collar, he forgot he was even wearing it under the armored neck of his suit, how did he forget--seems to constrict around his throat.

He feels the jolt first--it feels like somebody hitting him in the back of the skull with a plank, and it takes every part of his body and jerks control away from him, sends him toppling uncontrollably forward.  He manages to catch himself on bruised hands and battered knees and then drops onto his side, thrashing and jerking.  And then, a second late, the pain hits.  For a second he can see his own hands, crooked and spasming in agony, crawling with red-white lightning; white-hot, all-consuming, crackling jagged under his skin.  Then his eyes roll back and for a while everything is pain.

When he comes back he’s still on the ground, breathing in great, aching heaves.  His throat feels rough and ragged.  Around his neck, the collar is hot enough to almost burn--Mike raises a hand slowly to his throat, then remembers where he is, what’s happening.  He pitches himself over onto his front, trying to force his limbs to push him upright.  

“ _\--friends,_ ” he gets out, bent double, legs trembling, and then drops sharply back down, panting.  “ _\--if you--hurt them--_ ”

“Oh, don’t worry about them, they were much too far away to feel that,” Kane says, somewhere overhead, and Mike struggles for a second before pushing himself up again, swaying.  His limbs are still pulsing with sickly pain, his hands cramping and spasming.  “I could set theirs off too if I wanted to make the effort, but since my business in Motorcity is going so well without me, I think I’ll hold off on visiting it.”  He laughs to himself, soft and cruel.  “...For now.”

“ _But why--the collars--?_ ”  It’s so hard to catch his breath, his heart is still going too fast and too hard.  

“They’re my insurance.”  Kane’s finger hovers over the trigger again--Mike tenses, ready for pain, but Kane closes his hand and dismisses the screen instead, smiling in pure self-satisfaction.  “You don’t think I saw this coming?  I had to be _prepared._ If I’d kept up that voltage for a few more seconds, I would finally have been done with you once and for all.”  He says the words like he’s savoring the thought--he watches for a minute as Mike sways, fighting to stay on his feet, and then shakes his head.  “...But you haven’t stopped being useful yet, Commander Chilton.  We have work to do.”

“I’m done--being used,” Mike rasps.  “There’s nothing--you can do to make me--”

“Follow your orders like a good soldier and I’ll let your little friends scramble around on their trash heap and pretend they can stop me,” Kane says, and spreads his hands like he’s granting some kind of great and magnanimous gift.  “Unharmed, _alive._  Disobey me, try to talk to them, run your _insolent_ ungrateful mouth off at me _..._ I’ll make sure we have video feed before I turn the collars on, so you can watch how long I keep them alive before their hearts stop.”

There’s no air in the room.  Mike stares straight ahead and listens to his heartbeat roar in his ears.

“Do you understand?”  Kane’s voice is suddenly quiet, soft and dangerous.  “Commander Chilton.”

Mike opens his mouth and hesitates--the words taste like bile and blood in the back of his throat.  Kane is watching him.  

“...Yes,” says Mike, hatred shaking in every syllable.  “I _understand.  Sir._ ”

Kane gives that rare, booming laugh, and Mike twitches at the sudden noise--and at the lingering echo of satisfaction and joy that clutches at his mind.   _Mister Kane is happy with you,_ whisper the last traces of that soft, white haze, and Mike’s stomach twists with directionless, furious hatred.  Kane claps a hand on his back, hard enough to almost hurt--Mike grunts but refuses to stagger.

“Good choice,” Kane says, and strides away, back toward his screen.  His unguarded back feels like an insult.  The urge to lunge for him is almost overwhelming, but Mike can still remember their fight in the sunset high over Deluxe, the raw power Kane hit him with and the feeling of the empty air under his feet when Kane held him over the edge, beaten. There’s nothing he could do to Kane, not even with the tech in his suit, that will keep him from activating Mike’s collar a second later.

...If Kane even bothered with the collars.  He might just throw Mike off of him and beat him unconscious instead.  Mike may be reckless, but even he will back off when the odds are stacked this high against him.  Right now, he has no chance.  Paralyzed by the full understanding of the orders he blindly followed, dizzy with the sudden, raw access to his own emotions, injured from countless battles-- _with your_ friends _you hurt them you captured them you_ put Kane’s collars on them _what have you done WHAT DID YOU DO--_

\--Mike can’t fight like this.  He bows his head and tries to concentrate on staying upright.

“We have an announcement to make, by the way,” says Kane.  “I was hoping to save it for later, but this seems as good a time as any.”

“An announcement?” says Mike, an immediately hates how weak his voice sounds through the haze of pain and horror.

Kane chuckles.  “Don’t worry, Chilton.  All you have to do is smile for the cameras while I talk.  I’ve had the speech written for _months_.”


	13. Fight to the Death!!  Mike vs. Motorcity!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What will happen now that Mike's broken the implant? Will Julie make up with her friends? What is Kane's final plan? IS EVERYONE GOING TO DIE?! Hold your ponies, lady-girls. We're gettin' to the tasty bits.

Jacob wants to go straight to the other Burners with all of Julie’s new information--the mind-control device, Harley’s research, how it forces Mike to follow Kane’s orders.  Julie argues as she packs, shoving everything she might need into her backpack with reckless force.

“ _They deserve to know!_ ”

“I know!  I know, and we’re going to tell them, but I need to be there!  Just hold on, okay?!”

“ _Listen, kiddo--_ ”

“Jacob!”  Julie stands up, throws her backpack on and meets his stare through her comm screen, eyes hard.  “I said _not yet_.”

Jacob stares at her for another long second, brows furrowed like he doesn’t quite know what to make of her.  Then he nods slowly.  

“... _Not yet,_ ” he repeats.  “ _You got ten minutes._ ”

“I’m on my way.”

Julie hangs up and runs.

She would have taken her pod out if it weren’t for Kane’s warning not to-- _not even to see Claire,_ he’d said.  Julie can’t pretend it didn’t send a sick little chill through her.  It feels like last time.  It feels like Genesis Day.  

But for now there’s something more important to focus on, so she runs, switching elevators whenever the control screen tells her there’s someone waiting for the one she’s in.  She’s jogging through a hallway halfway down the tower, breathing hard through a stitch in her side, when a voice calls _“_ Hey _! Kane._ ”

There’s only one person in this city who would call her that.  Julie almost keeps running, but there’s _no_ way Red won’t follow her if she does.  She slows reluctantly to a halt, breathing hard, and glares back at him.

“What?!”  she snaps, not bothering with the ditzy persona this time.  “Leave me alone!”

Red’s head tilts just a little, like somewhere under his helmet he might be raising one eyebrow.  “ _Where do you think you’re going,_ alone?   _Where’s daddy’s guard dog?”_

“Screw you,” says Julie, as harshly as she knows how.  Red snorts.

“ _So, you finally--_ ”

A sharp, dissonant tone makes Julie jump.  Red pauses as a screen pops up in front of him, reflecting scarlet off his helmet, and Julie feels her heart actually skip a beat as her father’s face spreads across it.

“ _There’s been a new development,_ ” Kane says.  He’s smiling, and the sight makes Julie’s stomach twist.  “ _We’ll be broadcasting shortly.  Starting now, Commander Chilton is no longer allowed near my daughter under any circumstances.  If you see him approach--_ ”

“ _Oh, don’t worry about that,_ ” says Red, and looks up at Julie over the top of the screen.  “ _I can use my imagination._ ”

The window vanishes.  Julie stares at the place it used to be, mind racing, heart pounding.  She has to go, but Red is still blocking her path and her legs can’t seem to move.

“ _So he finally slipped up,_ ” says Red, and steps forward, looking down at her.  “... _Looks like you’re in the market for a new bodyguard,_ Miss J--”

Julie punches him in the throat.  Red makes an undignified, strangled squawking noise and as he doubles over Julie takes the opportunity to hook one foot behind his ankle and pull him off-balance.  She’s off and running as he hits the ground, inside a new elevator within seconds.  She hears him yell hoarsely as the doors close, but there’s no way he can follow her now.  Not that she even understands why he wants to--or what that “in the market for a new bodyguard” line was supposed to mean.  Why hasn’t her dad forbidden _him_ from coming near her?

Her fingers dial the number before she can even think about it, and by the time the call goes through and Claire’s face appears, Julie is already talking.

“Listen, this really weird thing just happened--I was heading down to Nine Lives and I ran into Red and--wait, did I tell you about Red?  He’s that guy who--”

 _“Tries to kill you guys sometimes, uh-huh,”_ says Claire, sounding a little bit poleaxed, one hand still poised above an unpainted fingernail with a wet brush.

“--Yeah, and he found out Mike’s not my bodyguard anymore, which--”

_“Wait, seriously?  How come?”_

“I don’t know yet,” says Julie, that twinge of worry stabbing her stomach again.  “But then Red was like, _do you need a new bodyguard_ , and it was super creepy so I…”

She trails off, raising one hand awkwardly to scratch her cheek.  The swishing of the elevator’s descent suddenly sounds very loud.

 _“So you_ what _, oh my god Julie I’m dying here, don’t just leave me hanging like that!”_

“I--it’s just…  I remembered you were mad at me, I guess.  I totally forgot about all that stuff I said, I just called you--

 _“Uuuugh, Juuuulie, you can apologize when you’re done with the story, I’m, like, not_ even _mad at you anymore!  What did you_ do _?”_

“I...punched him in the throat,” says Julie ruefully.  Claire lets out a piercing shriek and waves her hands in glee, fingers awkwardly extended to protect her still-drying nails.

_“OH my god, yes!!  You rule!”_

\--

Julie apologizes a couple more times after that, even though Claire insists it’s not a big deal and she knows Julie is stressed, and all the other little excuses she always seems to have to make for Julie.  Julie promises her at least seven Girl’s Day Out days in the next month, and manicures, and a sleepover, just because.  

She also catches Claire up on the Motorcity situation.  Claire listens, eyes wide, occasionally gasping or going “oh, no _way_ ” in all the right places.  Claire may not be the Burners’ biggest fan, but she still looks faintly queasy at the description of Mike’s dead eyes, bruises, and mindless compliance.

She also, in her endless patience, lets Julie rehearse her speech.  Right up until she rolls up to the blast doors, they run over the details, practice her even, reasonable tone, and hammer out phrasing.  When Julie finally has to hang up to key in her code to the doors, Claire wishes her luck and gives her screen a big hug, blurring it for a second as her arms clip through the hologram.

“ _Good luck, Jules_ ,” she says, and blows the screen a kiss.  “ _Thanks for telling me_.”

Making up with Claire takes some of the edge off the tight edge of worry in Julie’s chest, but even that relief can’t completely alleviate Julie’s worries about seeing the other Burners again.  She doesn’t have time to waste worrying about how they’re going to react, though--ten minutes, Jacob said, and it takes almost that long just to drive down here--she’s probably late already, but she has to be there.  She has to.

Her code for the doors still works, which is reassuring--as angry as they might be at her, and as scared as they might be about Mike, they haven’t locked her out completely.  Julie roars up to the hideout and unbuckles, pulls her keys and puts Nine Lives in park all in the same fluid motion, racing into the hideout.

Jacob has the boys gathered up around the counter when she gets there.  By the edgy way Chuck is tapping his fingers and Texas is throwing little rabbit punches at the air, they’ve been waiting for a while.  She has to be over the ten minute limit, but Jacob looks up at her over the boys’ heads and nods, and Julie knows he waited..

Julie is still not ready when the other Burners turn to look at her, but she’s starting to think she could lock herself up in the tower for the rest of her life and not be ready.  Whether she’s ready or not, this needs to happen, here and now.

“Hey,” she says, awkward and a little bit tremulous.  “Uh...hey guys.”

They stare at her for a second, mutely shocked, and then as one they turn back to look at Jacob.  He crosses his bony arms, unapologetic.

“Okay,” he says.  “Now, you all gotta talk.”

Dutch crosses his own arms, shaking his head to himself-- _I can’t believe this_.  Texas shifts uncomfortably in his seat.  Chuck’s lips press into a rebellious, crooked frown.  

“No ifs, ands or buts,” Jacob pushes.  “You can’t afford this crap right now.  Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

“...We’re doin’ fine.” Even Texas can’t seem to muster up much bravado.  “We got it.”

Jacob laughs, not entirely kindly.  “Kid, if you had it any _less_ handled Kane would have his wrecking drones down here poundin’ us flat right now.  Julie’s got somethin’ to say, and you’re gonna sit your butt down and _listen._ ”

Reluctantly, everybody turns back to look at her.  Julie clears her throat and feels sweat prickle on the back of her neck.

“Kane...reworked some of Jacob’s old research,” she starts, as bravely as she can--imagines she’s saying it to Claire again.  Their watchful, grim silence makes her whole back go tense and her hands twitch, but her voice settles into a hard certainty.  “It uses an implant in the back of somebody’s neck to put...suggestions into their head.  To control them.  We don’t know if it’s possible to break out of--yet.  But--” she snaps her fingers sharply as the memory comes back.  “--but Kane sent out a message.  Mike’s not allowed out of the tower or near--he’s not allowed out anymore, _something_ happened.”

“When?”  Jacob demands, surprised.  “You didn’t say--”

“When I was coming down,” Julie says, and the boys look from her to Jacob and back, shocked and confused.

“And he could go whenever, before?”

“I think he was supposed to stay in the tower unless he had orders,” Julie says, and she’s barely got the presence of mind right now to remember to phrase things as if she doesn’t know for sure, as if she hasn’t had time and opportunities to get intimately acquainted with Mike’s _orders_.  “But he was never under lockdown like that.  I would...see him around the tower, all the time.”

“And you didn’t try to make him remember?”

The voice is quiet but there’s no mistaking it.  Julie stares at Chuck.  

“So...what?”  It comes out more bitter than she means it to, and a sort of almost-imperceptible wince goes around the circle.  “You just _believe me_ now?”

She expects them to give her--what, an apology, an acknowledgement, _something_ \--but the boys just shift uncomfortably, like there’s still some kind of unspoken grievance hanging in the air between them.  Chuck squeezes his arm with the opposite hand like he wants to pull his slingshot again, the skin going white under his fingers.  Julie can’t see his eyes through his bangs, but she can tell he’s not meeting her eyes.

“ _What?_ ”

Texas shakes his head and sits back.

“...I knew,” he says.

All eyes turn to him, incredulous.  Julie almost expects him to gloat, to be proud of having figured it out, but he doesn’t sound enthusiastic or triumphant.  He crosses his arms and looks down at his feet instead of their faces.  “...Come on,” he says.  “Only ever seen Mike kick butt like that.  Just...y’know.”

“...Didn’t want to believe it,” Dutch finishes for him.  “Me neither, but...he drives like Mike too.  I should have said something.”

Texas punches him in the arm and sniffs hard.

“... _We all shoulda said something,_ ” says Chuck, barely audible, and pulls his knees up to his chest, huddling in on himself.  Julie turns to look at him just in time to see him brush his hair back and scrub awkwardly at reddened, too-bright eyes.  He glances up, sees her looking and hastily turns away, letting his hair hide his face again.

“... _Sorry,_ ” he says.  “For...” he doesn’t finish the sentence.  Julie shrugs it off and smiles at him.  Chuck smiles back and scrubs at his face with one arm.  “...it was _Mike,_ ” he says helplessly.  “It was just--it was Mike.  I knew you were...I knew, I just didn’t wanna…”

He trails off, and Texas actually puts an arm around him, shaking him roughly, not looking at anybody.

“I didn’t know crap,” Jacob volunteers, and a ripple of cracked, damp-sounding chuckles goes around the counter.

“I should have told you as soon as I found out,” Julie says after a moment.  “I shouldn’t have kept it a secret.  Sorry.  But--but I’ll show you guys everything I’ve got, and--I swear I tried to break him out of it, guys, I even tried to take him to Motorcity!  But he just...broke down and I couldn’t force him to, and...Kane told him to…  I mean, if we captured him he was supposed to…”

Chuck, who keeps swallowing like he might throw up if he hears anymore, brings up one of his screens in a familiar comfort mechanism.  Julie doesn’t object--she wishes everyone else would just distract themselves too, instead of staring anxiously at her, waiting for her to finish the sentence she left hanging horribly in the air.  It’s almost a relief when Chuck speaks up, but then she hears the fear in his voice and her heart starts to sink again.

“Uh, guys...you know the Deluxe morning news…?”

Texas rolls his eyes.  “ _Pfff_ , no one watches that stuff!”

“N-normally, no,” Chuck concedes, in a voice that suggests he’s barely restraining a hysterical breakdown.  “But Kane’s broadcasting this one to the screens by the blast doors and--I think he’s--”

There’s a moment of silence in which the Burners stare at Chuck, and then he flips his screen around with one shaking hand, magnifies the footage of Kane’s familiar, shark-like face.  And standing at his shoulder…

“No,” says Julie softly.  And then, louder, “No, why would he have his helmet off?  It doesn’t--”

Jacob shushes her loudly, one gnarled hand giving her shoulder a few awkward pats.  “Need to hear what he’s sayin’.”

 _“--back in the service of our magnificent city.  Very soon, with Commander Chilton’s help, the Motorcity problem will be eliminated_ once and for all.”

Julie’s heart drops so hard it hurts.  Mike looks back at them, and his face is...different.

“Holy crap,” Texas says, quiet like for once he doesn’t want to break the silence.  “...’s totally him.”

“He broke out.”  Julie can’t tear her eyes away from Mike’s tired, dark glare.  “That’s gotta be it, he--when he was under, he had this look, like he was thinking about something else...”

“ _Shhh_ ,” Chuck hisses, strangled and pained.  “Waitwaitwaitwait, he’s talking again.”

“ _To any Motorcity scum that might be spying on this transmission; take a good look,”_ says Kane, and Julie has to stifle an actual gasp as her dad’s eyes seem to fix directly on her, sharp as knives.  “ _This is the boy you treated like some kind of hero.  I hope you realize now just how wrong you were.”_  For a second, his voice is a cold sneer--then he smiles again, waving the point away. _“...And to my Deluxian citizens; don’t worry.  Commander Chilton has been a thorn in our side for a long time, but now that he’s reinstated here, he won’t be causing any trouble.  Will you, Commander?”_

Mike stands silently at his shoulder and doesn’t answer.  His face is battered and bruised; his expression is blank and sullen, but he doesn’t argue.  Doesn’t deny it.

“ _Will you_ ,” repeats Kane, and this time Mike looks up at him, eyes full of silent, heavy hatred.

 _“No,”_ he says, and stops.  There’s a muscle working in his jaw.  “... _Sir_.”

Kane doesn’t say a word.  He just turns back to the camera and smiles a vicious, self-satisfied smile.  The transmission cuts out.

The awful empty quiet stretches on for what feels like an eternity.  All of the Burners sit silently, staring at the place where Mike’s face used to be, thinking their own thoughts in leaden silence.  

“...So,” Jacob says finally.  “He’s not under Kane’s control anymore.  That’s good.”

“ _Good_?!”  Dutch repeats incredulously.

“Yeah,” says Jacob patiently, “That’s good.  Means he can help us out when we get ‘im back.  Sounds to me like if you’d tried goin’ after him before he busted out, he’d have put up a real heck of a fight.”

“He said he had…’termination orders’.”  Just saying the words makes Julie’s stomach turn.  The other Burners all wince again.  “But--he wouldn’t follow those orders now, he doesn’t have the implant any more.  Right?”

“Well, _somethin’s_ making him follow orders,” Dutch says, and his eyes flicker around the circle--his hand rises to his neck.  “Somebody.”

Chuck drags his hands down his face and makes a garbled noise of pain and frustration.

“Guys,” says Texas, a second late, with dawning horror.  “Dudes.  The collars.  It’s totally the collars.”

For once, nobody bothers to rag on him for being the last one to the uptake.  Dutch has his fingers dug into his neck, like he’s trying to pull the collar off with his bare hands.  Chuck has his face in his hands, slowly shaking his head back and forth.  Texas jitters in place for a second and then growls and throws himself upright, pacing.

“I’ve been working on the files of the guy who cracked Jacob’s research,” Julie says, painfully aware even as she says it that it’s much too little, way too late.  “It’s slow going, but--”

“So let us help.”

Julie stops, startled.  “--I--what?”

“You’d go way faster with more hands,”  Chuck says.  “I mean--I know it’s all locked down, but what have you got?”

“Just fragments...”

“Can I see?  I’ve been trying to figure out how to resolve--”

“Anything else about the mechanics of those collars?”  Dutch asks, as Julie stares from face to face, speechless.  “Mike’s got one of those too, even if we can get him they gotta be remotely activated somehow…”

“Right, yeah!” says Chuck, with almost too much enthusiasm.  “Come on, Julie, let’s do this!  We...J...Julie?”

Texas looks at Julie and raises one eyebrow.  “Whoa there, Betsy.  If you cry I’m gonna have to leave.  Texas is uncomfortable with that.”

Julie laughs a pathetic, shaky laugh and rubs her eyes.  “I’m...fine.  I’m okay.”

“You should’ve let us help,”  Texas says firmly.  “ _And_ you should’ve told us.”

Trust Texas to say it to her face.  Julie nods.  “I know.”

“Cool.”  Texas turns and slams a fist down on the counter--Chuck jumps and squawks.  “Did you make it work yet?”

“No!”

“Why not?!”

Chuck gapes at him.  “Dude!  She hasn’t even sent them to me yet!  I have to get something to work on before I can ‘make it work’.”

“Okay, well, what are you gonna do?”

“I don’t know,” says Chuck, and flexes his fingers as Julie starts transferring her half-translated notes to his screens; fragments and scattered pieces of Kane Co. encryption.  “But it’s gonna work this time.  It has to.”

Five hours later, they have more than fragments--mainly thanks to Chuck, whose brain seems able to flip problems around to angles Julie simply can’t access.  File after file goes by, occasionally punctuated by quiet conferences when another code blocks the way or a disgusted grumble from Chuck at the sight of one of Harley’s in-text selfies.  When the screen labeled _Dual-Purpose Shock Collar Controller_ appears on-screen, Chuck actually cheers out loud and Julie laughs, punching the air.

“At least the guy’s good at labeling his stuff.  You know, if you can find it,” says Chuck, enlarging Harley’s notes so that everyone in the room can see.  Jacob sidles over and peers at them, frowning.

“...So the thing that turns ‘em on also opens the locks,” he says, jabbing a finger at the two buttons on top of the controller, one red, one blue.  “Really put his eggs in one basket there.  Press the wrong button and you’re gonna regret it either way.”

“What, you would’ve made two different controllers?” says Chuck, turning to look at the old man.

“And what are eggs,” adds Texas suspiciously.

“I’m just sayin’, I wouldn’t’a done it like _that_ ,” says Jacob, sniffing.  “Or made death collars in the first place, for that matter.  Julie, you think you can get one of these?”

“I know I can,” says Julie, and pushes herself up.  It feels so good to have a purpose again, she almost feels...good.  Things are even worse than they were before, but for the first time in days Julie feels almost good.  “Keep my seat warm.  I’ll be back.”

\--

Deluxe is silent as the grave.  Julie pulls up into the evening light, throws on her illusion, and then stops halfway out of the shadows as a tight, weird little shiver runs up her spine.  It takes her a second to realize what it is; everything is still.  The buildings aren’t docked, but they don’t move.  Every pod is in its tower, every tower is hovering, immobile, in the twilight sky.  The only sign of movement is the slow rotation of the massive Kane Co. “K” on the tower in the distance.  

The tower is just as empty.  Julie spots one or two people in R&D uniforms or management jumpsuits, but they’re all hurrying toward the residential quarters, heads down.  The bot docks are empty, but there are no patrols zooming around the corridors overhead.  

The silence is so complete, the sudden beep and flash of her comm screen almost gives Julie a heart attack.  She ducks into a corner--not that there’s anybody to hide from--and pulls up a call from Claire.

“Girl!” says Claire, as soon as Julie opens the screen.  “ _Jules, you gotta call your dad!  He’s_ freaking out! _He’s called me, like, a_ million _times, if you don’t show up somewhere soon he’s probably gonna send drones out after you!_ ”

Julie pulls up her inbox--she didn’t hear any calls come in, but sure enough there are eight separate calls in her inbox, at increasingly tight intervals. “Sorry!” she says fervently, “Thanks for keeping him busy, I’ll get him off your back.”

“ _Okay_.”  Claire hesitates.  “-- _is something happening?”_

“I don’t know,” says Julie, and minimizes Claire to a hovering holo-cube, talking as she walks.  She’s in the middle of the barracks, passing by observation windows that look out onto massive, empty parade rooms that could fit an entire residential tower with room to spare.  Usually there would be ten or twenty platoons of soldiers in every room, running drills and sparring--they’re completely deserted.  “Just stay indoors, okay?  Don’t go out, I don’t know what he’s doing but you could be in...danger…”

“ _Jules?_ ”

“Stay safe,” says Julie distantly, and closes the call.  Her feet carry her to the last long expanse of window in the hallway, until she can reach out and touch the glass.  She sees her breath fog the window--a small, sharp gasp--but she can’t hear herself breathing over the sudden tinny ring of panic in her ears.

She knew her dad had an army.  Hundreds of security officers--thousands, even, and even more bots.  But she’s never seen them all gathered into one room before.  A sea of blue and white uniforms, standing at attention in perfect regiments.  A hovering cloud of bots and drones throws a deep shadow over them; at the back of the room, ranks of Ultra-Golems tower over the KaneCo army, mechanical eyes smoldering red.

And there, standing above it all--

Julie ducks to one side, away from the window, heart hammering.  She doesn’t know what would happen if her dad saw her here--if he’d ask her to join him or lock her in her pod for the rest of the day--but either way, she’s not risking it.

All the walls in Deluxe look about the same.  Julie finds a stretch of hallway that could just as easily be the unfurnished side of her bedroom and opens a comm window, bracing herself for the sight of her father’s face.

 _“--don’t_ care _whether they’re battle-ready!  If they explode in that sewage pit then all the--_ ” and then he sees who’s calling.  “-- _dismissed!  You have your orders!_ ”  he turns back to the screen as whoever he was yelling at hurries away.  “ _Julie-bear?”_

“Hey.  Dad,” says Julie.  Okay Julie, sound natural--at least _try_ to sound natural.“How--how’s it going?”  Okay Julie, try harder!

_“Where have you been?”_

“In my pod,” says Julie.

 _“You weren’t answering my calls!  I know it’s been...a rough time for us recently--”_ (God, what an understatement, thinks Julie)   _“--but soon that’s going to be_ all over _.  I’ll be able to spend more time with you and--”_

“I had a fight with Claire!” Julie blurts out wildly, unable to stand his attempts at being reassuring any longer.  “That’s all, Dad, we had a fight and I was really upset…”  Not the truth, but not a whole lie either.  The stuff she’s gotten good at.

 _“Oh.”_ Kane’s brows furrow.   _“Well, that explains why she didn’t know where you were.  What did you two fight about?”_

“It doesn’t matter now,” says Julie, as comfortingly as she can with the pressure of time weighing on her.  “We made up.  I--I’ll tell you about it later.  Are you busy?”

Kane’s eyes move away from hers for a moment, and Julie knows he’s looking out at his amassed forces.   _“Kind of,”_ he says, and though there’s a laugh in his voice his eyes are dark and sharp.

Julie swallows hard.  Feels fear burning in the back of her neck.  “...Does it have something to do with Mike Chilton?” she asks.  “I saw the news, Dad--”

“ _Don’t worry, honey,_ ” says Kane, comforting, and it’s terrible how that tone makes Julie sick to her stomach now.  “ _It won’t be like last time.  He’ll never get that close to you again.  I’ve made_ sure _of that._ ”

“Okay, cool!” says Julie, and _knows_ he can hear how hysterical she is.

_“...Julie-bear, are you--”_

“Fine, just--really tired, wow--gotta go, bye Dad!”

She hangs up and blocks him.  If he wanted, he could still get some luckless R&D code monkey to override the block and open her connection--he’s done it before--but he’s busy now.  She’s probably safe.

Julie lets herself stop for all of ten seconds, and then she pushes herself up and forces herself to stand tall, shoulders back and head held high.  There’s still more to do.  There’s _always_ more to do.

\--

There’s only one light on in Kane Co’s R&D department.  After the eerie emptiness of the rest of the tower, it takes Julie a second to even recognize what that might mean, and she slows abruptly to a halt inside the door, heart suddenly hammering.

Harley is sitting at his desk with his head in his hand, shoulders hunched, eyes closed.  He’s not... _crying,_ not really, thank goodness, but he’s taking deep, slow breaths that shudder painfully.  The shadows under his eyes look even darker than they did last time she saw him, stark and dramatic against his pale skin.  

She starts to back away, but it’s too late.  Harley jumps at the sound of her footsteps, shifts and pushes himself upright, staring around.  When he sees her, he barely even looks surprised.

“...Julie,” he says, thick and hoarse.  “Thought you might...mm.”  He bites off whatever he was going to say, looks away from her and rubs his eyes roughly.  “You’re looking for this.  Right?”  

He holds up the last collar.  Julie stares at it, and then at him; Alex doesn’t look in the mood to jump up and arrest her, or to report her.  He just holds out the collar, staring at her with tired blue eyes.

“Why...would I want that?”  Julie says.

“It’s the same kind M--Chilton put on your friends,”  Harley says.  He still isn’t pulling it back.  “Maybe you can do something with it.  I don’t know how long you have, but…”

“What?  I don’t--I don’t have any friends!”  Julie says, but it’s too high and just a little too forced, and Harley’s eyes just stay fixed on her like he doesn’t even hear what she’s saying.  “Look, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Just take the collar,” says Harley, and reaches out to push the cool polymer into her hand.  Julie’s fingers close around it automatically.  “But--get back up here, okay?  After you give it to them.  It’s...it’s going to be bad, Julie.”  He hunches back down, drops his head into his hands again.  “... _It’s going to be really bad._ ”

Julie’s chest tightens, and at first she thinks it’s fear but when she opens her mouth she feels the undercurrent of anger in her words.  “Well, I’m sorry, but I think it’s a good thing we didn’t go on any more dates, Alex, because you don’t _understand_ me.”

“I understand more than you think,” says Harley pointedly, but he doesn’t meet her eyes.  Just stares blankly at the collar in her hand.  “And I’m telling you, you’ve got to stay away fr--”

Now Julie feels the familiar, viselike grip of rage settle on her mind.  “Oh, so if _your_ friends were in danger, I guess you’d just--run away, then!”

“I--”

“You don’t understand,” Julie repeats, stuffing the collar into one pocket.  “I have to go, Alex.”

He looks up at her just as she starts to turn away, looking strangely small and lost.  “I don’t...have friends.  Either.”

Julie isn’t sure why she says it.  Maybe it’s because she still kind of likes Harley, or because she wants to have the last word, or because Mike said he was a good guy.  “Yeah, well, you could have,” she says.  It comes out a bit gentler than she meant it to, more like a plea than the last word in an argument, but he doesn’t answer, so she keeps walking.

She’s needed in Motorcity.

\--

The room they’ve given Mike in Kane Co. tower is small and plain.  He grew up in a room like this, every recruit had one, but it never seemed so _small_.  Heck, when he was under Kane’s control it felt like a wonderful luxury.   _Look at this place Kane Co. gave me.  So generous._  Mike sits on his bed, and feels the tension in his chest slowly grow as the minutes tick by.  

He has to get up twice to punch the walls and pace, when the jittery energy gets to be too much.  It doesn’t fix it, but it burns off just enough for him to sit back down and start all over again, feet tapping, teeth grinding.  He _needs_ to be doing something, and it sends a sharp jolt of sick self-hatred through his guts to realize he would even take another mission from Kane right now, just to be down in his city again, to breathe the air and see his friends and _do something._

He still feels a sick twist in the pit of his stomach when the summons comes through though, and he has to put the helmet back on.  The smell, the close air, the feeling of the padding against his skull, it’s all too strange and too familiar, both at the same time.  Mike wants nothing more than to throw it away and run, but he can’t afford to walk through the tower with his helmet off.  Worst-case scenario, he gets shot on the spot and then Kane takes Motorcity and electrocutes his friends.  Best-case, he beats anybody who tries to pick a fight with him, and then Kane electrocutes him, takes Motorcity and kills his friends the same way.

Mike lifts the helmet to take one last breath of fresh air, then pulls it back on and heads for the door

Red falls in on his heels when he comes out of his pod; he’s obviously been standing there, waiting for Mike to come out and give him an excuse to pound the tar out of Mike again.  Mike glares at him, his fists itching under their gloves.

“...Bored, Red?”  he says, and hears his voice come out garbled and harsh through the voice filters.

“ _Keep walking, Chilton,_ ” says Red, and shoves him forward.  “ _Don’t want to_ disappoint _Mister_ Kane.”

It takes every ounce of Mike’s self-control not to turn around and punch the guy right in the helmet.  The jibe sets off a cascade of half-remembered words, like Red must have known it would-- _I’ll fix it I’ll make him happy Mister Kane is going to be so--_

Mike keeps walking.  

Kane is waiting for him in the office at the apex of the tower when Mike leaves Red at the door and steps into the vast, empty space; he’s got his back to the door, looking out at the city like he wants to look important and ominous.  Mike scowls--he yanks his helmet off, crosses the office at double-time and stands at perfect, rigid attention, not bothering to hide his expression.  Kane raises an eyebrow at the sight of the sneer, but apparently he has bigger things on his mind right now because he doesn’t address it.

“I’ve got a mission for you, Commander Chilton,” he says.  “I’m sure you’re getting _homesick_ now that you remember the hellhole you came from--”

“Actually, I think I’ve had enough of the hellhole I came from,” says Mike. “I’d rather go back to Motorcity.”

For a second Kane holds his eyes and Mike has to force himself to stand still and straight and quiet.  He’s not going to back down, it doesn’t matter that Kane could turn on his collar again at a whim.  Pain isn’t going to sway him.  It never has before.

But then Kane laughs and shakes his head.

“ _Mike,_ ” he says, almost fondly, and Mike’s gut twists at the familiarity and sheer wrongness of it.  “You and I both know that kind of insolence does _nothing_ to help you or your friends.  Too arrogant to keep your mouth shut, but too much of a coward to actually make a move.”  He reaches out and pats Mike’s shoulder, and Mike twitches all over, fighting the abrupt, intense impulse to shake the hand off and throw a punch.  “I should really make you suffer for that.  But fortunately for you, I’m in a...generous mood.”  He drops his hand, starts to pace away and then pauses, remembering something.  “Oh,” he says.  “Speaking of generosity, you can have _this_ back.”

He tosses something small and shiny under-arm in Mike’s direction.  Mike would have let it fall, but as it reaches the top of its arc, the flash of chrome and the shape of it ping his memory, and he swipes it out of the air.  The edges of it are familiar in his palm but he doesn’t look at it.  The familiarity is painful.  Again, his gut sears with the urge to attack, the temptation almost irresistible with his weapon in hand.

But that thought is brutally interrupted by an image, plastered stark and horrific across his mind’s eye; Dutch, Chuck, and Texas, clutching their throats, convulsing with pain as jagged strands of red light wrap around them.  Julie, collarless but helpless to save them.

Mike blinks.  Realizes his hands are folded into fists tight enough to hurt.  Relaxes them.  Kane is watching--and there’s no way he didn’t notice, Mike can tell when he meets those cold, too-sharp eyes.  Can see it in the way Kane is smiling at him.

Mike returns the smile humorlessly and holds up the silver skull Kane threw to him, feeling the familiar hum against his skin, the shape of it in his hand.  “What changed, Abe?  Do I get prizes for good behavior now?”

Kane narrows his eyes, but he’s still smiling.  Never a good sign.  “Chilton, you wanted to know why I let you live, didn’t you?”

“Because you never found anybody who even came close to replacing me?”  It’s dangerously close to back-talk, even though he manages to keep his voice mostly even, but Kane doesn’t seem to be listening.

“Because I realized the mistake I made last time!” says Kane, spreading his arms wide.  “It would have made you a _martyr_ , Chilton.  I would have scoured your filthy little slum eventually, but how much easier is it to have the trash _take out itself_?  Motorcity is weaker than ever now.  You and I _made_ it weak.”

He paces, passing Mike, and it feels like a dare, moving easily within range of the staff in Mike’s palm.  Mike follows him with his eyes but doesn’t turn his head.  

Kane is still talking--“If I send you to destroy them, then eventually, they will destroy you.  And if I tell you to, you’ll _let them_.  Two birds with one stone.”

Mike grits his teeth, and not for the first time becomes suddenly aware of the slick fabric of the Kane Co. uniform against his skin.  He should be used to it by now, but he isn’t and he never will be.

“I’m not doing that,” he says flatly.

“Aren’t you?  I thought we’d established that you’ll do whatever you’re _ordered_ to, _Commander Chilton_.”

 _“Including die?”_ says an all-too-familiar voice.  Kane whips around, his attitude of easy command vanishing.  If he knew Red was there, he’s doing a very good job of acting like he didn’t.

“What are you doing here?”  He snaps, and then visibly forces himself to lower his voice, back ramrod straight and expression thunderous.  “...You don’t come into my office without orders.”

 _“That’s not the question,”_ snarls Red, advancing from the shadow of the doorway.   _“The_ question _is why you didn’t tell me you were planning to get Chilton killed on your terms.  We had a_ deal _!”_

“That was yesterday,” says Kane coldly.  “This is today.”

_“You son of a--”_

“Ah-ah-ah!”  Despite his apparent anger, Kane still manages to sound unbearably smug as he waves one broad finger in warning.  Red pauses, shoulders rising and falling with quick, furious breaths.

_“...What.”_

“You really think I wouldn’t have a failsafe for you too?  I can shut down all the tech in your suit with the press of a button.”

_“I don’t need your tech to fight!”_

“Oh, please!” Kane roars, advancing on Red now, casting a broad blue shadow across him in the red sunset light.  “You wouldn’t stand a chance against me without it!  And even if you did, my men outnumber you a _hundred to one_ , do you understand?!”

 _“It doesn’t matter if I get to him first,”_ Red hisses, but Mike can already tell he’s lost this battle.  Both he and Kane know it, and a few quick keystrokes on Kane’s part leave no doubt.

“I’d like to see you try when you can’t use your suit...or your _car_.”

In the silence that follows, Mike watches Red’s hands clench and unclench, devoid of their usual crackling electric halo.  When Red speaks again, his voice is tight with fury.

_“That’s not.  My.  Car.”_

Kane laughs as Red stalks away, waving a hand to banish the command screen.  “Whatever it was, it’s in the incinerator now.  Don’t try to leave Kane Co. Tower.  You’ll regret it!”

\--

“I got a collar,” says Julie breathlessly, banging it down on the table in front of Chuck.  “It looks like they open and close pretty easy when they’re not on someone’s neck…  Maybe the inside is touch-sensitive?”

“Sounds about right,” says Chuck distractedly, sparing the thing a disturbed glance.  “But, look, we gotta talk about--stuff--and if we survive--!”  He giggles sharply, and Julie notices for the first time that he’s shaking all over.  He swallows convulsively, cutting off the laughter, then finishes in a tremulous voice, “ _If_ we survive, we’ll get the collars off.”

“Okay, well...what ‘stuff’ do we need to talk about?” Julie asks, picking up the collar and pocketing it again.  Chuck sighs and stands, sweeping his hair back so that for a moment she catches a glimpse of red-rimmed blue eyes.

“Worst-case-scenario doomsday stuff.”

“Oh,” says Julie, her heart sinking.  “Well--you talk about that stuff all the time already, right?”

“That doesn’t mean I _like_ it!” Chuck snaps.  “I kinda hoped that after the Genesis Pod catastrophe, I wouldn’t have to do the whole _doomsday scenario_ thing again, but nope!  We’re just that lucky!  And there’s no way we’re gonna get the gangs to help this time!”

“We don’t know that,” says Julie, even as her stomach turns into a heavy, sinking pit.

“Pff, yeah we do,” snorts Texas, squeezing Jacob’s homemade organic mayonnaise onto a loaded hoagie bun.

“Well, we still have to try!” says Julie fiercely.  “I’ll get Claire to call Foxy, and we can all go talk to Rayon--”

“Okay,” says Dutch slowly, “but listen--even if they did wanna help us, do you know how many cars those guys have lost in the past couple of weeks?  Like, I get where you’re comin’ from, but between those and the drivers who’re out of commission…”

“Ain’t what it was last time,” Texas finishes, and tears a chunk out of his sandwich with his teeth.   _“No fife, Dufie.”_

Dutch grimaces and leans away from him.  “Come _on_ , don’t talk with your mouth full!  If my mom could see you--”

“But she can’t,” says Texas pragmatically, after an enormous swallow.  “Good thing too, ‘cause she’d wanna adopt me and Texas ain’t got time for that.  I _said,_ no dice, Julie.”

Julie doesn’t miss the way he uses her actual name, or the short but intense eye contact he makes with her.  She just chooses to ignore both.

“We have to _try_ ,” she repeats.

\--

They try.  Julie calls Claire on the way to the Skylark Motel, and Claire gets back to her before they’ve reached it.  Dutch isn’t in on the call, but he’s driving at Julie’s right flank and he sees her pound the dashboard when Claire hangs up.  A moment later her icon winks into existence next to him and she says, tight and clipped, _“No dice.”_

Texas’s icon appears next to hers, frowning.   _“Hey, that’s my thing!”_

“It’s no one’s _thing_ , Tex,” mutters Dutch.

 _“Everyone says it,”_ Chuck agrees.  Texas starts to retort but Chuck cuts him off with a scream a second later as he tries to speed up behind them.  Blonde Thunder swerves alarmingly, and for a moment it looks like he might be trying one of Mike’s Special Moves for Getting Places On Time, like throwing the car off the side of a highway and cartwheeling to a halt on the ground below.  But then Chuck pulls straight, wheezing, and they take the long way down to the motel.

The Burners all wordlessly slow as they approach their destination; there’s a line of Buicks already sitting outside, and when the Burners roll up one of the black cars cruises forward to block their way.  The front windows roll down to reveal two black-suited men with hands casually resting inside their jackets.  In the lead, Dutch taps the brakes.  “Eyes on, guys.”

 _“We could take ‘em,”_ grumbles Texas, but he eases back too.  They roll to a halt a few feet short of the Skylark and watch, maybe a little nervously, as the men climb out of their car.

“You here to see Mister Rayon?” says one, an old guy with a steel-blue undercut and a broken nose.

“Yeah.”  Dutch manages to keep his voice even, conversational, but it’s not easy.  It keeps wanting to tremble.  “...That a problem?”

The two men glance at each other.  Undercut cocks an eyebrow; the other man’s mouth thins reluctantly, but he nods and reaches up to tap his comm.  “Sir,” he says.  “Burners are here.”  There’s a moment of silence.  Then he sighs and steps back, opening the path to the Motel.  “...Yessir, Mister Rayon,” he says.  “They’re coming in.”

There are more cars in the courtyard, but even in all their gleaming, glossy-black glory it’s obvious there aren’t as many as usual.  The cars skip numbers.  The ones that are still there have scuffs and dents in their perfect paint-jobs.  

Rayon’s car is still spotless.  The window rolls down as they walk up, and Rayon takes his hands off the wheel to lean out, looking at them impassively through his opaque sunglasses.

“Didn’t figure I’d see you kids tonight,” he says evenly.  “What can I do for you?  Make it quick; we’re heading out.”

“We need help,” says Julie immediately, and her tone almost makes her sound like a fellow gang boss.  Almost.

“Help with _what_ ,” says Rayon, in a voice like cold concrete that tells Dutch he didn’t miss Julie’s attitude.  Dutch doesn’t know what’s gotten into her recently, but even Texas knows better than to talk to Rayon that way.  Time for a little diplomacy.

“Help with Motorcity,” he says, stepping forward.  “Like last time.”

Rayon turns his key in the ignition.  “Not interested.”

Texas frowns.  “Say what? Last time--”

“ _Last time_ there was a giant cube killing my city,” says Rayon.  “Unless you’re here to tell me it’s comin’ back…”

Julie folds her arms, scowling.  “It’s not, but--”

“Then I’m not interested.”

“--But Kane’s bringing _everything else_!  We couldn’t have beaten the Genesis Pod without you and the rest of the gangs!  How do you think we’ll manage this time?”

“The border defenses will hold,” snaps Rayon.  “And you got some nerve coming here, telling me to take your side again.  Or did you miss the news about Mike?”

None of the Burners speak for a moment, but Julie’s eyes narrow.  Dutch goes very still.  Chuck’s fist tightens and a line of green dots glows softly under the skin of his forearm.

“Dude, you wanna be more careful about the words comin’ out of your face!” barks Texas, but Rayon’s patience is obviously wearing thin.

“No!  No more _for Mike and Motorcity_ , get it?  Not after that.  You’re lucky no one’s tried to take you guys out yet...probably won’t be long, though.”

“Wha--but we didn’t _do_ anything!” Chuck chokes out, managing a few halting steps forward.  “And Mike--”

“Mike’s under Kane’s control,” says Julie, extending her hands in a last-ditch plea for Rayon’s attention as the purr of his Buick’s engine rises to a growl.  “He can’t help himself!  We have the data to back it up!”

“You saw what that kid could do when he was on our side,” says Rayon.  The lenses of his shades gleam opaque gold in the streetlights. “You guys...tried your best, and we all appreciated it, but we can’t take the chance of goin’ easy on him now he’s one of Kane’s _bots_.”

The atmosphere changes in that split second: Julie bristles, Texas barks “ _Not cool!”_ , and Chuck produces his slingshot array in an instant with a strangled noise, but it’s Dutch who actually pushes past the rest of them to grab Rayon’s perfectly-starched collar and shout, “Take it back!”

The entire courtyard goes still.  Dutch freezes, fury warring with sudden fear in his chest, and for a long second nobody speaks, or moves, or breathes.

And then Rayon lets out a long, slow breath and shakes his head.

“...Look, Dutch,” he says quietly, smooth and calm.  “I get it.  You lost somebody.  Never had that happen before, I’d bet.”  He reaches up and puts a hand over the fist knotted in his collar, and Dutch twitches as Rayon’s fingers close around his wrist.  Rayon’s voice drops to a barely-audible murmur.  “ _But if you put a hand on me again, I’m gonna break every bone in your arm._ ”

He lets go, and immediately Dutch does too, eyes wide.  Rayon straightens his suit meticulously, tucking his collar back in order, pushing his sunglasses back up his nose.

“You should get back to your hideout,” he says.  “Get your heads down, stay inside.  You can’t stop this.  It’s about time you stopped trying.”

Julie takes an aborted step forward as his car starts to move--Dutch grabs her shoulder, eyes wide, pulling her back.  Rayon faces forward again, and resettles his grip on the wheel as his window starts to slide up.

“Mister Rayon!”

\--And stops again, frowning.  A man is sprinting toward them, waving desperately, ignoring the Burners completely as he skids to a halt by the driver’s-side window of Rayon’s Buick.  Rayon rolls the window down again, looking disgruntled, and leans halfway out as the man pants for breath, holding his side.  

“Mister--Rayon,” he gasps again, and doubles over.  Rayon waits impatiently for a second as the man--102, by the number on the back of his coat--catches his breath, then clears his throat sharply.  102 snaps to attention, still red in the face.  “Mister Rayon!  It’s--h-he’s here!”

“What?”  Rayon’s brows furrow.  “Who is?”

“ _Chilton_ ,” says 102.  “Chilton, that Burner kid, he’s here!  He’s on the north side!”

Rayon sits very still for a second, unreadable behind his shades, hands tight on his steering wheel.  And then he looks past his man at the Burners, and shakes his head.

“...Then we gotta drive,” he says, and turns back to his monitors.  “Top ten, with me.  Odds and evens, flank us.  We got a mess to clean up.”

The Burners follow, of course.  Although the Skylarks’ cars close in protectively around their number one, trunks popping to reveal the glint of oily black gun muzzles, no one fires.  Which is just as well, because with the Burners like this, Dutch could easily see it turning into an all-out chase and shoot-out.  And they don’t have time for that right now.

Once they reach the city proper, rolling at a respectable 250, it’s easy to see where Rayon’s heading.  There’s already a crowd of gang cars--some Dutch can recognize, plenty more he can’t--and a few brave civilians circled around a storm of dust, debris, and flying projectiles.  But for the most part, anyone without a car is either watching from a window or making a run for it.  Chuck screams as he has to swerve around an old woman with a walker, making the comms keen with feedback.

“Better get out,” says Dutch as Blonde Thunder judders to a halt, her back wheels sliding over the sidewalk.  “Not like our cars can make it through that mess anyway.”

 _“You wanna go in there on_ foot _?  Why?!”_ Chuck squeaks, but Julie’s already hopping out of Nine Lives, equipping her boomerang.

“You know why,” she says, and dives forward into the storm.

\--

It’s the battle of the century: Mike Chilton versus ten armed vehicles.

Mike is winning.

Or at least that’s how it looks for now.  He can’t go forever, they all know it, but he counters every projectile with an expert spin of his staff, great showers of sparks blooming around him every time he fends off a blow.  Laser blasts rain down on him from all sides, in a range of colors like fireworks.  Mike is wearing the Blue suit but he’s unmasked, and Julie doesn’t see the helmet anywhere.  She’s more than willing to bet her father deliberately sent him down here without it.   _Take a good look.  This is the boy you treated like some kind of hero._

He can only fight for so long.  And there are already other people on foot, circling around him, held off by the scattered explosions and deflected lasers but looking for any opportunity to tear into him.  Mike dodges away as an especially brave Weekend Warrior takes a swipe at him and almost gets a hold on him--a missile shatters the concrete at his feet as he backpedals, almost knocking him to the ground, tearing gashes in his uniform.  More than one splatter of red stains the white material, but Mike only staggers for a second before he finds his balance, spinning his staff to deflect another rocket.

The onslaught falters just a little when the Burners come sprinting into the center of the fray.  Mike’s back is to them as he bats another laser burst out of the air in a spray of brilliant sparks, but somebody yells something with the word _‘kids’_ in it and in the uncertain lull that follows, Mike spins around to face the new threat.  He goes still at the sight of his friends pounding through the wreckage toward him.  Then another wave of projectiles streams towards him and he’s on the defensive again--but slower this time, out of sync somehow, a laser bolt grazing his arm as he spins the staff

“QUIT SHOOTING!” Texas roars, and to Julie’s total shock, the shooting slows and then peters out into a sort of uncomfortable silence.  Fingers twitch uneasily on triggers, car engines rev and roar, but for a second or two nobody fires.  

Mike looks at the Burners.  The Burners look back at Mike.

“...Mike,” starts Chuck, and then stammers quiet as Mike’s blank stare slides across to his face, eyes wide and wild with adrenaline. His eyes linger for just a second on each of them, and then he slowly straightens up and lets his arms fall to his side.  In the tense silence that follows there’s a metallic _ssshhhhrnc_ as he collapses the staff and stows the skull in his pocket.  The Burners heave a collective sigh of relief and let their own weapons drop…

And then he’s among them like a bolt of lightning, spinning and dealing out quick, painful blows--a heavy kick to Chuck’s thigh, an uppercut in Dutch’s solar plexus, a quick exchange of punches with Texas ending with a sweep that knocks Texas off his feet.

“Mike!” Julie shouts, and as he whips around she sees for a moment what the rest of them must have seen--the look of pain in his eyes just before the fist he’d drawn back collides with her face and sends her flying backwards.

When Julie makes it to her feet again, her jaw throbbing, lights still popping in her vision, Chuck is screaming, both arms wrapped around Mike’s shoulders and hanging on for dear life while Texas spins on his hands, feet scything through the air.

“He won’t stop,” Julie says, a little bit slurred, and forces herself to stand straight, blinking away the flashing lights in her eyes.  “The collars--”

“We just gotta take him _down_ ,” says Dutch, changing a few settings on his omnitool.  “We’ll get the collars off later!”

“Snap!  Outta it!  Tiny!”  Texas throws four quick punches in succession--Mike blocks three of them and then Chuck, hanging on him, flails and grabs hold of his arm.  The fourth punch snaps Mike’s head back and sets him staggering.  “Come _on_!  I don’t wanna punch you right now!  I mean, not like this, lame--”

Mike’s face does something terrible for a second, like he’s stuck between wanting to laugh and cry.  Then he reaches back and drags Chuck bodily off him, shrugging off glancing, clumsy punches and tossing him bodily into Texas.

“Mike!”  Dutch tries to dodge past Texas and then has to hastily backpedal as Mike’s fist almost breaks his nose.  “--Let us _help_ you!”

“Get outta here,” Mike hisses, rough and desperate, and pulls out his staff again.  The sparks at either end light his face up with harsh blue light and throws the tight, pained lines of his face into sharp relief. “--I--”

And then, from somewhere in the crowd of circling gangs, there’s a sharp, sizzling _crack_.  Mike is already turning as the noise splits the air; he raises his staff in front of him on pure instinct, and then the plasma bolt hits him square in the chest and blasts him back off his feet.

There’s dead silence for a second, and then the crowd _roars_ and rushes forward, weapons raised, toward Mike’s body on the ground.  None of the Burners say a word--none of them needs to.  They form a tight circle facing out, weapons raised.

Chaos descends again, close and hot and loud.  There’s no room for guns or lasers anymore, but that isn’t much comfort with hundreds of gang members closing in like a flood.  Julie is faintly conscious of large shapes coming closer beyond the mass of screaming faces and flailing limbs, but it’s not until she sets her boomerang to electrify and knocks back the Skylarks advancing on her that she sees the limousines.  

The Duke of Detroit had a longer drive than most, but of course he couldn’t stand by and let Mike Chilton take the spotlight again.  And he’s here in force.  Even the gangs scrambling to reach Mike start to ease up when the ranks of gray-suited minions start pouring out of the limos.  Number 2 is at their head, striding to the driver’s-side door of the biggest, shiniest stretch.

 _“And now presenting...The_ Duke _...of--”_

Julie doesn’t hear the rest of her introduction.  She’s distracted by a small, almost inaudible noise behind her. A groan.  Creaking metal.

Julie kicks a Weekend Warrior in the crotch, shoves him away from her and whips around to see Mike rolling over onto his stomach, coughing roughly.  His teeth are bloody when he bares them, trying to lever himself up on his staff--the metal is warped and bent from the laser blast that knocked him back, and as he puts his weight on it it gives a final screeching whine and breaks in half, sending him tumbling back onto the ground.

“Mike!”  Somebody grabs Julie’s arm--she turns back, sees one of the Mama’s boys drawing back a fist and hastily jams her boomerang into the inside of his elbow.  A jolt runs through him and shocks up her arm, but he yells in pain and backs off.  “Mike, stay down!”

“Guys...” Mike manages, and forces himself painfully to his knees, planting the broken end of his staff in the ground.  “Don’t--”  He tries hauling himself to his feet, hands gripping with white knuckles--once, twice, and then Chuck helps him up, muttering, _“Mike, dude, oh my god, okay, we’re here, Mikey--”_  Mike shakes his head muzzily and tries to push away but he’s swaying so badly he can’t seem to stand on his own.  Blood is dripping sluggishly down his chin; there’s a stripe of vivid red from his nose to his collar.  His left leg seems unwilling to support him.

“Sorry, Mike!” shouts Dutch, firing laser blasts at random, “We kinda got used to you not being in charge!”

Mike stares around at them in dizzy distress.  “But guys--”

“You don’t own us, little man!” Texas interjects, ruffling Mike’s hair with enough vigor to make him wobble and almost fall over again.  “Now sit back and enjoy the show, ‘cause daddy Texas is gonna _bring it_ , ‘kay? TEXAS TWISTER, YEAH!”  And then he’s gone, front-flipping into the fray and clearing a wide circle as people back away from his flailing feet.

“He’ll turn on those collars and he won’t--he won’t turn them off,” Mike says, catching Julie’s shoulder with one hand.  She winces--his grip is tight as he steadies himself--but in a moment relief and terrible fear wash over her in a great wave, strong enough to make her speechless for a moment.  Knowing it was one thing, but hearing him say it, the fear in his voice, is entirely another.  And then something catches the corner of her eye and on reflex she swipes her boomerang through the air, slicing the brick aimed at her head neatly in half.

“It’s us!” she shouts, loud enough for everyone to hear.  “It’s the collars!  Kane’s going to turn them on again if Mike doesn’t do what he says!”

For a moment, the action ceases as everyone turns to look at Mike.  Mike doesn’t seem to notice them looking at him--he’s still looking at Julie.  His face is twisted into an expression Julie almost doesn’t recognize, it’s so unfamiliar on Mike.  Panic.  He’s _terrified_.  “ _Jules, no--_ he’ll be here soon--you have to leave Motorcity, you have to- _-_ ”

Even over the shouting all around them Julie catches the undertone to his voice--warning, urgency, the deliberate way he phrases it--and realizes that he remembers.  He _knows_.

“ _Julie_ ,” he says, stronger now, “Please. You _have_ to go.”

He knows.  He knows and he still cares, he’s still trying to protect her.

“GO!” Mike shouts, and then, “You _owe_ me!  Get her _out_!”

Julie doesn’t know who he’s talking to until a hand closes on her shoulder and she turns to find herself on eye level with a gold plate engraved with the word **_DUKE_**.

“No _way_ ,” she growls, trying to pull away, but a moment later he’s hoisted her into boney, tracksuit-clad arms and is covering ground between Mike’s hill of smoking car parts and the surrounding throng with massive strides.  By the time they reach the cover of the crowd, however, the Duke has already suffered three furious slices from Julie’s boomerang plus a punch to the face that breaks the right lens of his shades, and he seems more than ready to surrender her to the care of his second-in-command.  Number 2 steps neatly to one side of a sloppy punch and then catches Julie’s arm and twists it efficiently into an arm-lock, forcing her gently but irresistibly down behind their makeshift shelter.

“Let--me-- _go!_ ”

“Listen, kid,” says the Number 2, and it’s surprising, somehow, how matter-of-fact she sounds as yells of pain and bursts of multi-colored light split the air.  “Chilton wants you safe?  Makes it the Duke’s business.  I deal w’the Duke’s business.  Settle down.  ‘Kay?”  

“And _now_ I don’t _owe_ him,” the Duke adds sniffily, and raises his voice.  “Tell ‘em to lock and load, Number 2!”

“You can’t save me and then shoot at Mike!” Julie screams, and then winces as her attempts to break free send shocks of pain up her trapped arm.

“ _Watch_ me!” crows the Duke, and gestures to his underlings, standing ready on the hoods of their limos with guns drawn.  

And then he whips sharply around, body twisting 180 degrees on the spot, staring over the tops of his glasses at something Julie can’t see.  But that doesn’t matter because a moment later she _hears_ it, the snarl of an engine she doesn’t recognize--at least not until it comes around a corner two hundred feet away and everyone turns to look at it.

It’s the car Kane drove as Vega, burning down the street at an insane speed, and a few bystanders have to actually dive out of the way as it comes.  And then, as it comes within a hundred yards of the chaos surrounding Mike, the driver puts on the brakes and spins to a halt, plowing through the crowd. The fighting gangs freeze as the car careens past, old-fashioned rubber tires screaming, steel bumper throwing up sparks.  The lasers have died away, but there are still fires burning and scattered, bent streetlights, and in the dim light the white V painted on its side is clearly visible. The top is open and it doesn’t take everyone’s eyes long to adjust and focus on the driver.

It’s Red.

 _“What?”_ wheezes Mike, clutching his ribs and staring in open astonishment as Red kicks open the driver’s side door.

“What’s _he_ doin’ here?” Dutch yells.  “Did Kane send him?!”

Red stalks around the car like a man on a mission, and then has to backpedal sharply with an angry grunt as the other door slams open and Alex Harley tumbles out and staggers to his knees on the ground, staring around at the gangs around them in open terror.

“Alex?!” says Mike, cracked and incredulous, and “--Harley?!” says Julie at the same moment, and then yelps as Number Two pulls her back down again.  “Hey!”

“I’ve got...a controller...here!” Harley wheezes, hoisting himself shakily to his feet.  There’s a little white device in his hand, Kane Co. sleek and bare except for two buttons.  “It’ll deactivate...the collars.”

 _“Or activate them,”_ says Red, and snatches the thing from Harley’s unresisting hand.   _“Kane’s coming,_ Mike _.  If I have to take out all your little friends to get to you before he does--”_ he raises his voice, gesturing at the watching crowd of gang members and Motorcitizens, _“--or before any of these dumb pawns do, then I_ will _!”_

Harley is staring Red in horror. “But we--you said--”

_“Say goodbye, Chilton!”_

Julie doesn’t know what makes her do it.  Maybe she’s gambling that Red won’t want to incur her father’s wrath by electrocuting his daughter.  Maybe--maybe she’s just tired of being the one to hide in moments like this, tired of people taking bullets for her.  If it’s any of those things, though, the thoughts don’t consciously cross her mind.  She just twists and ducks out of Number Two’s slackened grip, trailing decoy holograms for the woman to grasp at.  

And she runs, feet pounding the uneven ground, half-stumbling as her toes catch on scrap metal and prone, groaning bodies.  The world blurs around her the way it does when she’s driving, all bright, trailing lights and blurred faces--except for that flat black and red mask, that gloved hand clenched around Kane Co. tech.  With perfect, crystalline clarity, she watches Red raise the controller above his head, and she thrusts a hand deep in one pocket, fumbling until her fingers close around a smooth, cold ring.

She hears her friends start screaming a split second before the heat on her fingers registers--the material the collar is made out of is suddenly hot under her fingers as she comes to a panting halt between Red and the Burners and Mike lets out an awful, choked noise that might almost be her name.  She glances back at them and sees Dutch curled in on himself, Chuck spasming and thrashing, Texas crumpling to the ground, fighting to stay on his feet and failing.  Mike, reaching for her.

“Turn them off,” she says, and opens the collar.  The inside of it is flickering red and the light looks like pain.  Julie swallows hard, looks up and fixes her eyes on Red’s blank mask.  

“ _You._ ”  Red freezes, but his grip on the collar’s controller loosens, and Julie’s heart seizes with desperate hope.  She had only the faintest inkling that this might work, no evidence and no plan, but hand-to-hand combat was out of the question.  Even if she’d tried, all he would’ve had to do was keep holding the button for a few more seconds.

_“But you’re--”_

“A Burner,” says Julie loudly, staring him down with more boldness than she feels.  “You didn’t see that one coming, did you?”

Behind her, someone gasps her name--she can’t tell who, the voice is too hoarse and choked with pain, but Red twitches and there’s another sudden chorus of agonized, all-too-familiar screams.  She raises the collar until its inner surface is an inch from her throat, forcing herself to stay facing ahead, trying to meet Red’s eyes behind the mask.

 _“You wouldn’t,”_ Red snarls.   _“You’re not with Chilton, you_ can’t--”

And Julie snaps the collar around her neck.

Her vision whites out in the instant that the pain hits, but even through it and the whining in her ears, she hears her name again-- _”Julie, no!”_ \--and this time she knows it’s Mike.  Julie drops to her knees, her eyes streaming, every muscle in her body clenching painfully, over and _over_ and--Red’s standing over her, looking down, and the small part of Julie’s brain still thinking in words says, _This is it.  It didn’t work.  I’m sorry guys, I’m sorry, I--_

And then it stops.  White points of light constellated across her vision, Julie stares dumbly up at Red and sees him looking back down at her, still holding the controller, fingers slack.

And then Alex Harley cannons into him with a roar of effort, knocking him to one side and scrabbling for possession of the controller.  A moment later the collar on Julie’s neck pops open, anticlimactically soft and abrupt, and Julie knows it’s all over.

 _“You--!!”_ Red drives a foot into Harley’s ribs, kicking him bodily away, and gets to his feet.  None of the Burners can be in fighting condition after that, but it won’t take long for the rest of Motorcity to come for him.

“Well…?” she wheezes, lifting herself to her knees with trembling arms.  “What...are you gonna...do…?”

“Y--yeah,” says Harley, who’s holding his side.  “What now, Red?”

It seems to take a slow, horrible eternity for Red’s head to turn from Julie to Harley, and during that time Harley’s expression changes visibly from grimly questioning to deep regret.

 _“You’re_ dead, _Harley!”_

Harley takes about half a second to take in the sight of the enraged supersoldier charging at him, then seems to make the executive decision to run away.  He’s remarkably spry even on rough terrain with a stiff, still-healing knee.  He manages to keep just a step ahead of Red for about five seconds before nearing the edge of the ragged circle of onlookers.  One of the Weekend Warriors makes a grab for him, but he changes course sharply and leaps with astonishing lightness onto the Vega car’s hood.

 _“No you_ don’t _!”_

But Harley’s already thrown himself bodily over the length of the car, just barely clearing its bumper and tucking himself into a roll.  Red tries to follow, but now there are gang members grabbing at him instead, and for every one he rebuffs with a vicious kick there are two more ready to take this new, mysterious intruder captive.

Swearing and flailing, Red manages to throw himself backwards into the driver’s seat of the car, but when he tries to pull out there’s an awful chorus of thumping noises.

“Hey, we know who that jalopy belongs to, _man!_ ” drawls Junior, waving a pocket knife gleefully at Red.  “You double-park, you get your tires slashed!”

Red makes a horrible, wordless roaring noise and slams one fist into the weapons control column between the seats.  The car thrums for a second, and then a burst of red energy pours out of it, blasting back the gang members reaching for Red.  For a moment everything is dust and sour-smelling air and people falling over each other, yelling and coughing and throwing punches at shadows.    

When the dust clears, Vega’s car is still there but Red’s nowhere to be seen.  There’s just a wide circle of confused gang members and at its center, a kneeling boy in filthy, blood-spattered Kane Co. colors.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We'd apologize for the wait, but we needed to take a while and we'd reached a natural stopping point where we could recharge! It helped a lot and we're glad to be back! Stay tuned for next chapter, feat. The Trial of Mike Chilton! *ominous music*


	14. The Trial Of Mike Chilton!!  What’s The Verdict, Motorcity?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello Motorcity! We’re broadcasting from the Cablers’ Settlement, where we’ve set up court on neutral ground to review the case of Mike Chilton vs. the people. We’re leaving the final decision in your hands. Mike Chilton; innocent, or guilty?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't look too closely at our courtroom proceedings, haha. TuT

There’s a moment, in the quiet after the storm, where it looks like things are still going to go right down the tubes.  Most of the gangs are milling around, weapons out, yelling to each other and poking into every corner for a flash of red and black armor, but there are still plenty of them crowded around the Burners.  Most of them are bruised and bloody, and none of them look especially friendly.

But before any of them can make a move, the familiar howl of an enormous motor echoes off the buildings and a hulking shape comes bouncing over the piles of rubble, rolling to a stop as the gangs scatter around it.

Sasquatch’s headlights throw a pool of white-gold light over Mike’s bowed form.  He raises his head slowly to squint into the light, and there’s just enough time for recognition to flash across his face before the other Burners slam into him one after the other.  Chuck buries his face in Mike’s shoulder, making tiny, hoarse noises--Texas is shamelessly bawling.  Dutch’s grin is so wide it looks painful.  Julie presses her face into Mike’s shirt, and the fabric is all wrong and Deluxe-smooth, but it _smells_ like him.  She didn’t know she missed that.

“Hey,” Mike says, soft and rough--grips Texas’s shoulder, pats Dutch’s back, and then wraps his arms around Chuck and Julie, squeezing them closer.  “Hey, hey hey.Careful, guys, easy.   _Oof--_ missed you too.”

“Jeez, Mikey _,_ ” Chuck chokes, and smacks at his shoulder with no real force.  “What-- _took_ you so long?!  Jerk!”

“Aw, you know me.”  Mike drops his cheek against Julie’s forehead, grinning.  “I never get anything done fast.”  Sasquatch’s lights shut off, and there’s a triumphant squeal as ROTH comes swooping down from her distant chassis and whirs in excited circles around the Burners, spinning in the air and waving his arms.  “Hey--hey, hey buddy, it’s okay, I’m right here--Jacob!  Oh my gosh guys, c’mere--”

“Texas took care of everybody while you were gone,” Texas contributes, and ruffles Mike’s hair--Mike laughs, shaky and wet but blessedly familiar.  “We put new stuff in Mutt for you.”

“Chuck drove,” Dutch adds, and Mike makes appreciative, impressed noises until Chuck shoves him, embarrassed but proud.  “Everybody missed you, did you see the graffiti?”

“There’s graffiti?”

Dutch laughs out loud.  “Hell yeah, all over the place!  Somebody even--well, I don’t wanna spoil it, but you gotta see it!”

“Everyone missed you,” Julie repeats thickly.

“We missed you the most,” says Chuck, and Texas snorts.

“Well, I mean, _sure_ , but we were fine, Tiny!”

“Glad to hear it, Big Guy.”

“Mostly fine,” Dutch mutters, putting one ginger hand to his throat, where his collar left a band of scorched skin.  

“You got the collars off!” Jacob claps him on the back. “Knew you’d work it out, but what in sam hill--”

“Well Texas was _totally_ fine!  We did an awesome jail-bust plan--”

Chuck lets out a disbelieving peal of laughter.  “We fell through the dome!”

“Heck yeah we did!  Hey Mike, did you hear we--”

“Of course he does, he was there!”

“Guys.”  

There’s something about his voice, a gentle kind of edge, that makes all of them stop talking to look at him.  At his bloody, battered face and wet eyes.  At his smile.

“I’m sorry,” says Mike.  “I’m really sorry for everything.  I should’ve remembered you sooner.  I mean, I almost did a couple times, but I think it just...hurt too bad.  And...I’m sorry I attacked you before.  And just now.  I’m just really--”

“Are you _kidding_?” says Julie with pained incredulity.  “I ran my _car_ into you!”

“I shot you in the face,” Chuck adds, and then covers his mouth suddenly with one hand, gasping aloud.  “I _shot you in the face!_ Like _twice!_  Oh my god Mike--”

“I was wearing the helmet!” says Mike, half-laughing, half-frustrated.

“Yeah, but--”

“Texas regrets his punches for the first time in his life.”

“Guys, come on, it wasn’t your fault!”

“It wasn’t yours either,” says Julie forcefully, putting every ounce of feeling she can into the words.  “No matter what you did, Mike, it wasn’t your fault.  You can’t beat up on yourself for not fixing it soon enough!”

Chuck shrugs and tilts his head to one side.  “I mean--yeah, he technically can?  It’s kinda just...what he does?  But--” he continues hurriedly, waving his hands, “--that doesn’t mean he should!  For sure!”

Mike pauses, mouth thinning stubbornly underneath the blood crusted over it, but before he can say anything a ragged voice breaks the silence, calling Julie’s name.  She whips around, hand twitching towards her boomerang, but halfway-relaxes when she sees the source of the voice.

“You _are_ a Burner!  I knew it!” Harley crows, punching the air.  “It had to be you who took my files!  Wow!  You’re really good, I never guessed until right at the end that Mister Kane’s--”  He freezes as Julie’s eyes go wide, then finishes lamely, “...I mean, I...would never have guessed that...that _Kane’s_...biggest threat...was within the company…”  He trails off uncomfortably, mouth stretched into a faint, desperate grin.

“That’s right,” says Julie, eyes fixed still intently on Harley’s.  “We, uh, we don’t call him _Mister_ Kane down here.  Good catch.”  She feels a warm hand settle on her shoulder, and Harley’s pale face goes even paler.

“Hey, Alex,” says Mike.  

“Please don’t kill me,” says Harley breathlessly.  “Just--take me prisoner or--”

“We’re not gonna kill you, dude,” says Mike wearily.  He’s standing, though just barely from the look of him.

Harley looks startled, like the thought that he didn’t _need_ to beg for his life never crossed his mind.  “But,” he says, like a man who can’t stop poking at a scab to see when it’ll start to hurt, “But I helped Kane control you.”

“I helped Kane do a lot of things a year ago,” says Mike.  “And I wasn’t mind-controlled then.  You know what that’s like.  But...now you know what kind of guy he really is.  Right?”

Harley raises one hand unconsciously to his face, where bruises are still healing, and his eyes shift to one side for a moment.  He shivers, grimaces.  Nods.  “Right,” he says quietly.

“Good,” says Mike.

“Hang on just a cotton-pickin’ minute,” says Jacob, pushing between the other Burners with beady eyes fixed on Harley.  “ _Alex Harley?_ Are you tellin’ me _this_ string bean is the one who cracked it?  You gotta be kiddin’ me!”

“What were you expecting?” says Julie bemusedly.  “Another old guy?  Not all Deluxe’s tech guys look like Hudson, you know.”

“Not old!” Jacob sputters, glaring at her.  “Just not a dang baby!”

Harley flushes.  “Excu--excuse me?  You don’t know anything about me _or_ my tech, and I’m not a--that thing you said, a stringy--thing--okay, what, Julie?  What are you--”

Julie stops nudging Harley and mutters urgently, “That’s _Jacob_.”

“...Okay?”

“ _The_ Jacob?” says Chuck, with more _duh_ in his voice than Julie thinks she’s ever heard there.  “You know, the--”

“The one...who helped build Deluxe,” Harley finishes slowly, and slumps.  “Oh.  I-- _oh_.  Listen, I’m so--”

“‘Helped’ about as much as I ‘helped’ build that mind-control device I ‘don’t know anything about’.”

“I...didn’t know,” says Harley weakly.  “I...you…”

Mike puts an arm around Chuck and Jacob’s shoulders, looking from one to the other with a rusty smile on his face.  “Hey, guys, we can leave Alex alone for a while, okay?  Let’s talk about what we’re gonna do now.”

 _“‘Helped’ my wrinkly butt_.”

“Jacob…”

“Maybe if ‘ _Alex_ ’--”

“Guys, come on,” Mike says, gentle but insistent, and if it was Julie she would have had to stare everybody down but when Mike says it Texas huffs and falls in line, Dutch nods and Chuck relaxes and clings onto Mike’s shoulder, albeit not without throwing one last nasty look in Harley’s direction.  “We gotta…” his voice breaks into a long, trembling yawn.  “...g-gotta...mmh.  Talk about what we’re doing next.  Oof.  Geez.”  He drags his hands down his face, shakes his head a couple of times and forces his shoulders straight.  “Who’s got--”

“Mister Chilton!”

“Oh... _nuts_ ,” says Mike wearily.

“Some friend of the people you are!”  The Duke pronounces, advancing through the crowd like a shark through minnows.  People scatter in front of him; his cane is crawling with energy, throwing off sparks.  “We all saw it this time!  There’s no excuse for this kind of wantonly destructive behavior!   _Look_ at this!”

With all the melodrama of a ringleader presenting his star act, the Duke wrenches up the front of his shirt to show crisp white bandages wrapped around a protruding ribcage, and the tiny spots of red staining one side.  “I carried your little girlfriend away to repay my teeny-tiny debt to you and now my _stab wound_ is _bleeding_!  I think you owe me for that now, Mister Chilton, not to mention all the property damage you’ve done!”

As one, the Burners close in between Mike and the Duke.  Harley stares around, suddenly out on his own in Kane Co. colors, and then steps hastily behind them as the other gangs filter through the crowd--not shouting accusations like the Duke is, but not stopping him either.  Mike just stands there, swaying a little bit, bloody-nosed and dirty and tired.  

“You got stabbed?” he says.  “What--when?  Why?”

“ _Why did it take this long is more like it_ ,” Chuck mumbles, barely audible, and despite the tense atmosphere the corner of Mike’s mouth twitches.

“Okay, but who stabbed--”

“We’ll tell you later,” Julie hisses, without taking her eyes off the Duke.

“This was all Kane, go take it up with him if you’re lookin’ for a fight, Slim Jim!” Jacob growls, and hefts his wrench like he’d like nothing better than to take a crack at the Duke’s smug, triumphant face.  “You let him alone!”

“We don’t have time for this,” the Duke says dismissively, and raises a hand.  There’s a crackle of cocking rifles.  Mike glances around at the hostile faces around him and raises his hands slowly.  He doesn’t look scared, or angry--just unbearably tired.  “...Get him outta my sight.”

“But!”  Harley’s voice comes out cracked--he flinches as faces turn to him, fists half-raised like he’s expecting to have to fight.  “--I thought down here--you did it the old way!  I mean... _proving_ things, and...and juries, and…”

“Trials,” says Jacob, and Harley slumps, looking relieved.  “He’s right, there was always supposed to be a trial.  That’s one of the places Deluxe went wrong.”

“We all saw what he did,” the Duke snaps, looking put out by the interruption, but there are heads nodding in the crowd.  The older citizens especially are nodding firmly.   _That’s how we used to do it._

“Innocent until proven guilty,” says Jacob firmly, and crosses his arms in the face of the Duke’s glare.  “Now back off, y’hear.”

The Duke holds his eyes for another long second, but the crowd around him is murmuring now.  The words are spreading, _trial_ and _proof_ and _innocent until proven guilty_.  The Duke glances around, brows furrowing, and for a second his hand tightens on his cane.  Then he jerks his head, lip curling, and the other gang leaders turn and split away, vanishing into the smoke and rubble to find their own factions.  Jacob stares after them for a minute, then shakes his head and turns back to the Burners.

“...What a yahoo,” he says, and slings his wrench on his belt so he can spread his arms instead.  “C’mere, kid.  You figure you’re gettin’ away with just the one hug?”

Mike laughs, a little bit weakly, and limps forward to hug Jacob too, resting his cheek against Jacob’s red bandanna and slumping down with a tired little huff.

“Trial, huh?” he mumbles.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Jacob firmly, and pats his back.  “We’ll take care of it.”

\--

Abraham Kane is pacing.  Even with the tech at his disposal, even with the entire R&D team working to crack the gates, Motorcity seems somehow more impenetrable than ever.

“They’ve beefed up their border security,” mutters Garcia, the head of Offensive Tech.  “We might have to brute force it…  That’s going to take longer than you wanted it to.  Sir.”

Garcia has gotten irritatingly apathetic recently.  But he’s good at his job and Kane hasn’t seen Tooley in about a week, so the man hasn’t gotten a classic Kane Co. disciplinary meeting yet.  Kane leans on his desk, jaw working, watching through the eyes of what was meant to be the second wave of entry-level bots as flares of plasma-bright fire obliterate five drones in a shot.

“They can’t keep picking off stragglers forever,” he growls, and bares his teeth as a bot slips through the net of oppressive fire and a gun turret goes up in flames, leaving its gunner to scramble to safety.  “Motorcity dies _tonight_.”

“Well golly, I hope we’ll be home in time for throat cubes, sir.  My favorite.”

Kane makes a mental note to dig Tooley out of wherever he’s gotten lost now.  He has work to do.

\--

Mike has only one request before the trial, which is to go back to the hideout and get the heck out of his suit.

“Good plan,” says Jacob, grimacing as he looks Mike up and down.  “You wanna throw it away?”

“Yeah,” says Mike without hesitating, ignoring the little noise Harley makes behind him.  “I...I lost your jacket.”  He winces as he says it, almost like he’s expecting Jacob to get mad--Jacob sighs and pats him on the back.  

“It had a good run,” he says philosophically.  “Just glad we got you back.  That’s the important part.”

“But…” Mike swallows hard; his voice comes back a little too quiet and a little too hoarse.  “It’s _yours,_ I mean, it _was_.  The first day I was down here--”

“Eh.”  Jacob waves it off.  “We’ll get you a new one.  Heck, maybe the old one’ll turn up yet!  Used to lose that thing all the time.  Don’t worry about it, kid.”

Mike swallows again, and then takes a breath and sits up straighter and nods.  

The fact remains, though, that under the suit all he’s got is a plain Kane Co. standard issue tanktop and a pair of shorts that show off the ugly, livid bruises all over his arms and legs and back.  Mike winces whenever he catches somebody looking at them, but nobody can seem to stop.  Everybody seems to be looking for their own mark, the bruises they put on him.  Julie can’t stop her eyes from wandering back to his leg--he’s still limping a little, and his knee and thigh are stained with healing yellow-green bruises, sickly against his golden-brown skin.

And then he tugs on his own clothes, a white T-shirt worn thin and soft by Jacob’s patient and persistent washing and his second-favorite pair of pants and a scuffed pair of boots, and he...looks like Mike again, even without the jacket.

For a moment he just stands there, hands deep in his pockets, eyes closed, and then he looks up at all of them, taking in their faces with a warm, affectionate look.  Then his eyes reach Harley and he squints, cocking his head on one side.

“...What’s with the face, Alex?”

“Hm?”  Harley swallows as all the other Burners also turn to look at him.  “Oh.  Uh.  Just...you look different now.  Like the pictures they show of you on the morning news, but less…”

“Evil?” suggests Mike, half-grinning.

“Vicious,” Julie offers.

“Why do they always give you sharp teeth?” asks Dutch, frowning.  “Is that like...somethin’ we’re supposed to have down here?”

“Actually, yes,” says Harley quickly.  “It’s a fairly recent--well, propaganda campaign, I suppose.  There are all sorts of radical body modifications--”

“Yeah, alright, we get it, you know big words and you’re drinking the Kane-Aid,” says Chuck, with a toss of his head that might be an eyeroll.  “You’re only here ‘cause--”

_“Hurry it up in there!”_

All eyes turn to the nearest door, beyond which an army of headlights fills the comforting shadows of the Burners’ hideout with glaring white light.

“...Because I’m better off with you guys than I am with _them_ ,” Harley finishes.  Chuck snorts but doesn’t argue.  A moment later, a Skylark with the number 21 on his back peers through the door with a hand hidden meaningfully inside his jacket, and jerks his head towards the waiting cars.

“Could’ve just said it was time to go,” mutters Dutch, and turns to Mike.  “You okay?”

“Sure,” says Mike.

Texas scoffs and folds his arms.  “You suck at lying!”

“Well...ready to go, then,” Mike amends.  “Let’s ride, Burners.”

“Um.”

Harley once again becomes the target of a suspicious group stare, to his immediate, acute regret.  “Um,” he says again.  “How...am I getting there?”

“Same way you got here?” Texas answers instantly, then pauses.  “--Uh, how did you get here, anyway?”

“He told the Skylarks he was with us,” says Julie, her tone unreadable.  “But I’m guessing he doesn’t want to because of--”

“The aforementioned not wanting to be killed, yes,” Harley cuts in, sounding more desperate by the second.  “Speaking of which, I don’t suppose you have a change of clothes that I could--”

“No we do not,” says Chuck.

“I think Mike’s would probably fit--”

“No they would not,” says Chuck.  There’s a long pause, during which Alex fidgets and Mike looks between him and Chuck like a dog whose owner only pretended to throw the ball.

“...I’ll get you a hologram later if you want,” says Julie, relenting.  “But right now we really need to move.  You’re not the only one here who isn’t exactly popular in Motorcity right now.”

“Alex can ride with--” Mike starts.

“There’s no room,” says Chuck.  

“Well, I mean--”

“Julie, you can take him right?”  Chuck throws her a very meaningful look.  Julie, who has been studiously avoiding being within five feet of Harley ever since he showed up, replies with an equally meaningful one of her own.

“Look,” says Mike, “You’ve been driving, right?  So you could drive yourself, and I could take Alex.”

Chuck’s mouth drops open.  Mike, apparently oblivious, starts painstakingly tucking his shirt into his pants.  

“Wh-- _no_ ,” Chuck says.  “He--I can--I’ll drive him!  Okay?”  

“Really?”  Mike glances up, distracted, and grins a sunny grin.  “Sounds good!  You guys are gonna get along great.”

The rest of the Burners look from Chuck, whose mouth is twisted up like he just chugged a bottle of lemon juice, to Harley, who’s standing awkwardly in a corner not really looking at anybody.  

“...We should get goin’,” says Jacob finally, and tosses Mutt’s keys.  Mike snags them out of the air and just stares at them for a second, then shoves them in his pocket and straightens his shoulders, taking a deep breath.

“Okay,” he says.  “Let’s do this.”

\--

The Burners stick close together on the road, penned in on all sides by the enormous escort of battered gang cars that followed them to the hideout.  Mike would obviously rather be going about three times their current speed, but every time he starts to accelerate the cars in front of him flash their brake lights warningly and Mike slows down again, occasionally with a staticky sigh over the comm.  Julie and Dutch are discussing the trial with Jacob, trying out unfamiliar words like “prosecution” and “attorney”.   Chuck is sulkily silent, although in the background of his comm Harley’s voice occasionally pipes up talking about something incomprehensibly scientific.  Texas keeps pestering Mike for stories about what it was like to be a secret supersoldier; Mike doesn’t give him the cold shoulder, but his answers are tired, no more than five or ten words.

The drive to the Cabler’s Settlement seems both too long and too short.  Julie has a whole spread of screens open when she hops out of her car, full of ancient legal documents.  Chuck is scowling when he unfolds out of Blonde Thunder, with Harley on his heels still talking.  

“--your papers and they were really interesting, your thesis about cy--oh wow.”  He stops in his tracks, staring up at the glittering spire of power conduits.  “ _Wow_.”

“Look at you go, dude!”  Mike claps Chuck on the shoulder.  “We’re gonna have to update our formations, if we’re gonna have five cars--”

“I help more when I’m driving with you,” says Chuck firmly.

“Really?”  Mike grins, surprised but clearly pleased.  “It’s pretty quiet driving without you, but you sounded like you..y’know, like you felt...safer...driving yourself.”

Chuck glances back over his shoulder at Harley and doesn’t comment.  Mike shrugs and throws an arm around his shoulder, half-leaning on him as the rest of the Burners convene from their various cars.  

Rayon had wanted to be the one to call the Settlement ahead of time and request the use of their land as neutral ground for the trial, but Dutch--at risk of digging himself even deeper into Rayon’s bad side--insisted on doing it himself.  And maybe Rayon remembered Tennie’s speech, or at least her laser wrench, because after a moment’s hesitation he stepped aside to let Dutch make the call.

She’s waiting for them when they arrive, and when she sees the Burners she pushes her way bodily through the crowd of gang members around them.  AJ and a few of the Weekend Warriors try to block her, but she just speeds up, the focused look on her face hardening into a glare, and they move aside.  One of them even salutes.

“Guys, hey!  I’m so glad you’re alright!” Tennie calls, waving one thickly gloved hand above her head.  Her eyes are fixed on Dutch, who seems to realize suddenly how much dust and blood is still on him and starts hastily brushing himself down.  A second later, he’s forced to stop when Tennie pins his arms to his sides with a fierce, rib-constricting hug.

“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she says, and pulls back, looking him over.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”  Dutch glances around self-consciously at the crowd around them.  “...How--”

Tennie pulls him down by the front of his shirt and kisses him on the lips.  Somebody in the crowd laughs and wolf-whistles--Tennie makes a very rude hand gesture in their direction and then lets go, straightening Dutch’s rumpled shirt for him.

“...I’m glad you’re okay,” she says.  “Don’t tell my dad I did that.  He’d be really dumb about it.”

“Mmm,” says Dutch.  “Hm.  Uh.  Yeah.”

“So...a trial,” says Tennie, her voice all business again, although she still has one arm still around Dutch’s waist.  “We were thinking about using the main landing over there--you know, the one we’ve been repairing since it got _half-destroyed_ last week!”  (A few of the nearby Weekend Warriors flinch as she raises her voice.)  “But...it’s still gonna be crowded.  A lot of people have been telling us to broadcast the trial city-wide since we heard there was gonna be one.”

Her eyes flicker towards Mike, her expression unreadable, and Mike must notice, because he clears his throat and says, “Do it.”

“Mike!”

“Are you sure, Mike?”

“That’s right, Tiny ain’t got nothin’ to hide!” shouts Texas, cutting over Julie and Chuck’s concerns.  Dutch stays silent, frowning as he looks between Mike and Tennie.

“I’m sure,” says Mike gravely.  “I just...feel like this is the only way to move past this, you know?  One way or the other.”

“‘Or the other’?” quavers Chuck, looking supremely unconvinced.  “What’s the other?  What’s the _one_?   _Mikey!_ ”

“It’ll be fine,” says Tennie, looking straight at Mike now.  “Even if Motorcity’s going to hell in a handbag, the Cablers haven’t.  And we all remember what you risked to save us before, even if…”

She pauses, dropping them into an uncomfortable silence, and before she can find the words to finish her sentence Jacob jogs up, mercilessly elbowing his way through a cluster of Mama’s Boys.

“There you are!” he growls, pulling down his bandanna to wipe sweat from the bridge of his nose.  “Lost you when we were parking.  You in charge here, young lady?”

He’s addressing Tennie, who looks startled for a moment but handles the sudden change in subject with aplomb.  “Sure,” she says.  “It’s my house.”

Jacob glances up at the towering, sinuous spire above them.  “...All of it?”

“She designed it,” Dutch interjects, with more than a hint of pride.

“That so?” says Jacob, the urgency in his voice briefly overridden by admiration.  “Maybe I oughtta take some lessons from you, Miss!”

“Is everyone down here a genius?” murmurs Harley to no one in particular.

“You must be Jacob,” says Tennie, ignoring Harley completely.  “And I’m guessing you didn’t come over here to talk architecture.”

Jacob’s half-smile drops abruptly, and he looks darkly back to Mike, who straightens self-consciously.  “If he’s goin’ on trial,” he says, grim like the words hurt him to say, “...we need a judge.”

“Don’t say that too close to the Duke,” says Julie, and Mike actually snorts and then forces his face straight again, lips twitching.  “Seriously, he would throw such a huge tantrum.  We gotta have somebody picked out and _here_ when we go out there.”

There’s a moment of intense silence as everybody frowns at their shoes or stares into the middle-distance, deep in thought.  Then Dutch snaps his fingers, breaking the quiet.

“--Bracket!”

“Dad?”  Tennie wrinkles her nose.  “Well…”

“This is his ground,” Dutch points out, ticking points on his fingers, “--he’s not scared of the gangs, he’s got a heck of a voice--”

“Well yeah, but uh…” Tennie gives an apologetic little wince.  “My dad is...not so good with crowds.”

“What?”  Dutch snorts.  “--but he’s huge!”

“So?”  Tennie elbows him.  “Look, he just doesn’t like talking in front of a lot of people.”

“Well Dutch has a point, it’s gotta be a Cabler,” says Jacob impatiently.  “Who else you got?”

Tennie frowns for a second, thinking--then, suddenly, her face lights up.  “Oh!  Duh.  I’ll do it.”

“What?”  Dutch starts to laugh, then sees Tennie’s face and stops abruptly.  “--oh.  Well--I mean, it’s a lotta people, you sure you want--?”

“You don’t think I can do it?”  Tennie crosses her arms, frowning stubbornly.  “I wanna help.”

“Okay!”  Jacob claps her on the back.  “Sounds good.  What‘s your name?”

“Tennie.”

“Ohh.”  Jacob turns to Dutch, who abruptly goes red.  “...so _this_ is--”

“Well let’s get goin’!”  Dutch grabs Tennie’s arm and hastily tows her away.

When they all get back to the landing of the Cablers’ Settlement, there’s already an argument going.  Word of what’s happening has spread; there are motorcitizens in the crowd now, some of them carrying the hovering cube-comms of friends or relatives that couldn’t make it there in person.  The gangs have settled down on the hoods of their cars in tightly-knit, hostile groups, looking sullenly around at the citizens when they jostle elbows.

There’s a sudden hush when the Burners show up.  The crowd parts for them; one or two people start clapping.  A couple of others boo.  Mike winces at both.  Tennie jogs past them and comes up to her dad--he bends almost double to listen to her, frowning intensely.  His frown only deepens as she talks, but when she stands back he sighs and nods his head.  Tennie nods back, back straight with nervous, proud determination, and turns to the group of men and women in the serviceable, star-emblazoned clothing of the Cablers’ Settlement.  

A few gang leaders--Rayon, the Duke, Foxy, AJ, Junior of the Mama’s Boys--make their way to the front of the room, forming a kind of half-circle facing Tennie, Bracket, and the Burners.

“So,” says Foxy coolly, “what’s the plan.”

“In the old days, there’d be a jury,” Jacob says, and frowns around at the crowd.  “But in the old days there were judges and courtrooms and all sorts of stuff we ain’t got.”

“...I hurt the whole city,” says Mike, and his voice is very small, thin with exhaustion.  He stands with his head bowed, arms folded, eyes almost closed.  “So...they should decide.  Right?”

“That sounds...logical?”  Alex glances around, checking with the others--there are heads nodding thoughtfully.  “But, uh...how.  Exactly.”

Mike takes a deep breath, apparently steeling himself to move, then stands up straighter, raising his head like it’s immeasurably heavy.  A wary silence falls, the gang leaders seeming to stiffen slightly as though ready for him to go berserk all over again.

Instead, Mike just coughs a little and finally says, “We’ve all got comm screens, right?”  He throws a look out over the crowd--heads nod.  “So there’s no reason everybody can’t just...vote.”

“ _Vote?_ ”  Junior sounds incredulous.  “What, but there’s a hundred-dozen of all these nobodies!  Do we--” he jerks his head at the gathered gangs, “--get double-votes, or what?”

“That wouldn’t make sense,” says Alex, brow furrowing.  “Voting is, uh... _democratic_ , right?  Like...an average of...the popular opinion?  Double votes...wouldn’t...um…”  He blinks and seems to register the cold, distrustful looks now aimed at him.  He wilts again, shuffling a little bit behind Texas.  Texas, busy glaring Junior down with his darkest scowl, steps absently in front of him.

“We can do that,” says Tennie.  “We’re already setting up to broadcast this city-wide, so everyone can hear all the evidence...  Send a number to vote innocent, a different one for guilty, screen text messages from any ID that tries to send twice--yeah, it could work!  We’ll just have to change the settings on the main comm link.  I’ll make the announcement.”

“Tennie,” says Bracket.  Tennie turns to her dad, looking apprehensive and slightly defiant, as she tends to when she hears that faint note of warning in his voice.

“What?”

“Let me do it.”

“I--but why?  You’re okay with me being the judge, so it should be okay if I do this too!”

“And you’re gonna do great,” says Bracket placatingly.  “But I’m still leader...for now.  So if there are any announcements to make, I’ll make ‘em.”

“...Okay,” says Tennie at last, a reluctant grin flashing across her face.  “Guess I can’t have _all_ the fun.”

Bracket glances at Mike, frowning.  “Yeah...fun.”

The announcement is made.  While it plays on repeat, cablers clear out an open area under Tennie and Bracket’s instruction.  Somebody finds a rickety chair and drags it to the middle of the clear area; a little old lady with a hard, lined face and blue star clips in her bun takes Mike’s arm and frog-marches him firmly over to the chair, where he collapses gratefully with a muffled groan.  The other Burners gather around his chair, looking back at the crowd with varying degrees of fear and defiance.

Bracket personally carries a pipe bigger around than Dutch’s whole body over to the side of the clear area, drops it with a thunderous CLANG and pulls up an oil drum as a makeshift seat.  Tennie clambers up onto it, sitting high over the rest of the crowd, and slams a wrench on the pipe a couple of times.  A sonorous boom echoes across the chatter.

“Okay!”  Tennie announces, apparently satisfied, and turns in her seat to yell to the crowd.  “Court is in session!  I’m not gonna shout over you all--quiet down!  Quiet--oh for Pete’s sake.”  She slides off her oil drum seat and ducks away into the crowd.  There’s a scuffle, a complaining _OW!_ That can only be the Duke, and then Tennie is back, holding a flashy gold and red microphone.  She taps it a few times, producing a hollow, staticky noise from the limousine-mounted speakers somewhere in the crooked mess of cars parked all around the makeshift “court”, and then clears her throat and and repeats, “--Court is in session!  Everybody sit down!”

“Who put you in charge?”  demands Junior.  Tennie crosses her arms and scowls at him.

“The Cablers are a neutral party,” she says.  “Who were you gonna put in charge?  Yourself?   _That_ guy?”  She gestures at the Duke.  

“Hwell, I am the most--” the Duke starts.  Tennie clangs her wrench again, drowning him out.

“None of you should be in charge of something like this,” she says.  “And neither can they!”  She waves her wrench toward the Burners.  “This isn’t about what your gangs want, this is about Motorcity.”

“We _are_ Motorcity,” the Duke says, but the crowd is murmuring agreement.  “--Oh, alright!  Okay, fine.  What’s our order of business, little miss--”

“My _name_ is Tennie,” says Tennie.  “We’re here to decide what to do about Mike Chilton.”

“What’s he actually accused of?”  The voice pipes up from the crowd, somewhere near the back.  

“ _Back-stabbing,_ ” starts the Duke, with the vicious determination of somebody with a rant to get through, but Foxy clears her throat loudly instead and shoots him a glare.  The Duke subsides with bad grace, eyeing her warily with one hand pressed over his side.  

“He was fighting for Kane,” Foxy says, in that smoky murmur that seems to carry further than it should.  “Which means he was fighting _against_ Motorcity.”

“He is in dereliction of absent duty, hut-hut!”

“It doesn’t look good,” Rayon agrees, still with that intractable coolness to his voice, unreadable. “Nobody’s arguin’ that.  What we’re here to figure out is what we’re gonna do about it.”

“You shouldn’t hafta do _nothin’_ about it,” Texas puts in firmly, “Because it ain’t his fault!  Listen, let Texas clue you in on--”

“Tex--no, wait.”  Mike clears his throat painfully and tries again.  “--it’s okay.  They’re...right.”

The crowd murmurs.  The Burners all open their mouths to vehemently disagree; Mike holds up a hand, shaking his head.  

“...Like I said, I hurt this city,” he says.  “I started the war between the gangs.  I...it’s my fault.  They were supposed to fight each other, tear up each other’s defenses.  Wreck everything.”  

The gang members in the crowd throw awkward glances at each other.  The Duke crosses his arms defiantly.  Foxy and Rayon are equally impassive, unreadable.  The citizens nearby watch them with expressions ranging from fear to outright dislike.  

“Yeah, but you didn’t want to,” says Chuck, shaky but insistent.  “You didn’t--”

“But I _did anyway_ ,” Mike says.  “There was this thing, an implant that made me do--whatever Kane told me to do.  And I…”  For a second his throat works, like the words are caught.  “...I... _wanted_ to follow his orders.  But this is my home.  I trust you.  All of you.”  

His eyes sweep across the gathered faces.  Some people meet his eyes squarely.  Some of them look away.  “If you really think I’m guilty, you guys can do whatever you want to me.”

“Melt.  His.  Face,” says a familiar, tinny voice from somewhere in the middle of the Duke’s crowd.  A metal hand clangs on the hood of a car.  “Melt.  His.  Face.  Melt--”

“Nobody’s meltin’ anybody!”  Jacob has his bony arms crossed over his chest, bushy eyebrows drawn low.  “If you’ll hold your horses for one goshdarn second--”

“Hwhat for?!”  The Duke springs up as if the car hood he’s lounging on is suddenly electrified.  “For _what_ exactly are we _holding_ these horses?!  He admitted it!  You all heard him!”

An uneasy murmur of agreement.  The Burners start forward, stepping between Mike and the crowd, but Mike just sits still and bows his head, hands open and palms-up on his knees as in the crowd weapons are drawn--

“Wait!”

Alex Harley, bruised and dirty and looking more than a little bit terrified, jogs into the spotlight.  “I--” he falters as he looks out at the hostile crowd, swallows hard and then soldiers on valiantly.  “--I-I put together the mind control device.  It was my invention--”

A mutter of disbelief runs through the crowd.   _Mind control?  Yeah right--_

“No such thing as mind control!”  somebody yells, and Harley opens his mouth to protest and then yelps as he’s shoved out of the way by one of Jacob’s pointy elbows.  

“Shut it!”  he bawls. “And listen up!  The kid’s tellin’ the truth.”  He pauses.  “...Except about it bein’ his invention.  You call messin’ around with somebody’s old blueprints ‘inventing’?”

“What?”  Harley’s mouth drops open.  “--I--no!  Your plans were invaluable, I didn’t mean…”

“Get to the point!”  calls somebody from the crowd, and Jacob glances back and then jerks his head at Harley, ushering him back up to the center of attention.

“I have data,” Harley says.  “I have...files, and video, and...all sorts of stuff.”  He glances at Jacob, wide-eyed, and lowers his voice.  “...That’s how court worked, right, uh...evidence?”  Jacob nods.  Harley turns back and speaks up again.  “--I have evidence!  Sorry for not saying so before, I wasn’t sure--”

“What’s your name?”  Tennie’s expression of shock and curiosity at Harley’s first interruption darkened noticeably when he said the words “mind-control device”--her voice is very cold.  Harley winces and straightens up, visibly twitching as he quashes the urge to salute.

“C-- _former_ Commander and Auxiliary Research and Development Officer Alexander Harley,” he rattles off, and then sags a little bit at the force of the glares that are being directed at him.  “I was...Mike Chilton’s case was assigned to me.”

“Sounds convenient,” says Foxy quietly.  “The head of his…’case’ just happens to be here, with ‘evidence’ that proves he’s innocent.”

“Yeah!” Junior agrees--Foxy rolls her eyes.  “You ain’t look like a ‘commander’ of nothin’!  How do we even know you’re from big, white and grody?”

Harley actually laughs, nerves and disbelief raising the pitch of his voice.  “I--I’m sorry, do you think I’m wearing this uniform as a fashion statement?  Down _here_?”

“ _Better watch his mouth_ ,” Dutch mutters, with a tense look at Junior’s face and the bristling Mama’s Boys.

“I’m--I _was_ \--an R&D scientist and an elite Kane Co. commander,” Harley says.  “I thought we were helping people, and uh...well, we weren’t.  And it wasn’t M--Chilton’s fault.”

“Tell us what happened,” says Tennie.  “From the beginning.”

“Uh.  Okay.”  Harley takes a deep breath, looking sweaty and even paler than usual.  “I’d found these old files--”

“ _My_ files,” Jacob adds loudly, and Harley gestures wordlessly in agreement before continuing.

“--and the project was marked incomplete, but with the new synthetics we’ve been developing in Deluxe--”  he only falters a little at the disgruntled rumble from the crowd.  “-- _With the new synthetics_ , it was possible to supply power to the device without causing a meltdown.  I took that into account, added a few improvem--uh...tweaks of my own, and took the idea to M--to Kane.”

He glances back at Jacob, who clearly didn’t miss the word _improvements_ , but nods curtly all the same.

“And...when I explained my research to him, he asked me if I wanted to be, um, a part of something big, basically.”

“And you said yes,” Tennie prompts, narrowing her eyes.  

Harley nods, eyes firmly fixed on a space somewhere in the distance, above the heads of the crowd.  “It’s just--when he asks you something like that, you kind of _have_ to--”

The Duke bangs his staff on the hood of someone else’s car, making Harley jump.  “Blah blah _blah_ , we get it, you’re a wimp, get to the _good stuff_ alr--”

“Order!” snaps Tennie, and the Duke actually shuts his mouth, looking as surprised as anyone else at his own compliance.  “Harley, keep talking!”

“I...sent a fake message to the Burners,” says Harley.  “That was my idea.  I remembered how they took Doctor Hudson last year, right out of R&D.  And, you know, actual cartloads of citizens, which in retrospect I realize should’ve been a red flag--okay, sorry.  Sorry.  After that, I went down to Motorcity with...that guy Mike calls Red, and we set the trap.”

 _“It was_ him _?!”_ hisses Chuck, staring at Mike.   _“He made the mind-control thing_ and _he was the guy on the bridge?  Oh my god Mikey why isn’t he in cuffs or something?”_

“It’s cool,” murmurs Mike.  He’s still watching Harley but he leans over for a moment to press his shoulder against Chuck’s.  “It’s alright, he’s a good guy now.  Like me.”

 _“_ No one’s _like you, dude,”_ says Chuck, both frustrated and fond.   _“He should be in cuffs.”_

“Hey, keep a lid on it ladies, Texas can’t hear the guy!” says Texas loudly, leaning around Julie to glare at Mike and Chuck.  Every eye in the room, including Harley’s, turns briefly to the Burners.  There’s a pause.  “...Keep talkin’,” Texas adds, gesturing magnanimously to Harley.

“--Right.  Well.  As I was saying, I actually have footage from the early days of Mi--Mike Chilton under Kane’s control…”

Mike stiffens visibly, then just as clearly forces himself to relax.  The Burners draw instinctively closer, protective and nervous.

Harley continues, sounding slightly more confident now--almost like a presenter at a board meeting.  He pulls up a screen, types something, and then throws out his hands and spreads the screen as large as he can, billboard-sized.  Lists of video files scroll across it; Chilton1.  Chilton2.  

“It’s important to note that at this point, Ch--Mi--Mike Chilton had already been ordered to forget the entirety of last year,” he says, and scrolls the screen down with experienced motions, flicking from file to file, looking for the right one.  “--This means his brain essentially repressed those memories and reverted to when he was a Kane Co. employee.  Except that the device also made it possible for Kane to...override...certain compunctions that caused him, um...difficulties last year.  And as you’re about to see, they, uh...were able to override certain other natural responses as well.”

These videos are new; the Burners watch, just as mesmerized as all the others, as on the screen Mike jogs up to Kane and salutes sharply, smiling hopefully.  He looks like himself, but there’s a distance to his eyes, like he’s thinking about something else.  Like he doesn’t even see how Kane looks at him with open disgust.  From the angle the video is shot at, there are flashes of something small and gleaming-metallic on the back of his neck.

Mike watches the video and the look on his face is...unreadable.  Bitter, or sad, or maybe just pitying, like he’s watching somebody else.  When Kane gives the order-- _you’re not going to fight_ \--his hands clench at his sides.

“ _Yes sir,_ ” says Mike in the video, hesitant but obedient, but the distance in his eyes is more pronounced than ever.  

They only watch a few minutes of the “fight”.  Mike is staggering after the first punch, bleeding after the second, and it only gets worse.  He hardly reacts, just stares at Red, tracking every punch with distant eyes, doing nothing to stop them.

“Fast-forward to--to whatever else you wanted to show us,” says Tennie.  She keeps her voice impressively even, but her hands are in fists on her lap.

“That’s it from this file.”

“...The...” Chuck swallows hard.  “It says there’s still five more minutes on the--”

“Yes,” says Harley heavily, and on the screen Mike crumbles to his knees and then forces himself up again on trembling legs.  “I know.”  He pauses the video--Red stands frozen on the screen, one hand fisted in the front of Mike’s uniform, the other one wound tightly back.  In the background, Kane stands grim and watchful.  

Mike reaches up absently and scratches at the healing split in his lip, giving Chuck what’s probably supposed to be a reassuring smile but which just looks kind of pained.  Chuck grimaces back, wrapping his arms unhappily around himself.  

“Kane stopped the...the test at a little past five minutes,” Harley says.  “Commander--I mean--Chilton, uh…”

“... _Call me Mike,_ ” mumbles Mike, hoarse with exhaustion.

“...Mike…” Harley says carefully.  “Mike passed out twice according to his vital markers from the suit, but even unconscious, he _still stood up_.  Which was in Kane’s orders, like you saw.  Um...so, the implant could override his unconscious mind, as well as fight-or-flight instincts.”

“So it was strong stuff.”  The Duke sounds unimpressed.  “Are we supposed to believe Kane just...switched it off to send him down here this time?

“He must have...broken out.”  Harley frowns and turns back to Mike.  “I wasn’t there when it happened.  Honestly, I didn’t know whether or not it was possible, uh...how did you do it?”

“He…” Mike stops, takes a deep breath and then lets it out slowly, obviously struggling to keep his voice steady.  “He wanted me to hurt my friends.  My family.  He didn’t just want me to ‘stop the Burners’ anymore, he wanted me to...break you guys.  I couldn’t just--I couldn’t.”

The Burners all edge in closer as one, pressing against his shoulders and the back of his chair.  Texas cuffs him awkwardly on the shoulder and then scrubs at his face--Mike winces and can’t quite hide it with a hasty smile.

“Oh, well,” says Harley, “that explains it.  I presented Kane with a plan--a series of tests for the scientific evaluation of the control’s extent.  I told him if he ramped it up slowly he could acclimatize his subject to more and more difficult commands, which he obviously _didn’t_ do!  I mean, really, his complete disregard for the procedure--was--not...nearly as bad as the thing he was doing in the first place...obviously.”

Harley trails off into nervous, sweaty silence and after a couple of seconds actually takes a couple of steps away from the Burners and their unified glare.

“It’s been a very weird couple of weeks,” he mumbles.

“Tell me about it,” says Mike, to everyone’s surprise.  He shoots Harley a small smile, which Harley stares at for a good five seconds before jerking his gaze abruptly away and continuing in a much louder voice.

“I actually think he was unwilling to do most of the things Mister--uh, Kane...told him to do.”  He fumbles with a screen and pulls up another video, scrolling through it.  “He didn’t say so because that was against his orders--I’m not sure he was even able to _think_ it--but there was a, um, a verbal tic, of sorts...”  he hits play.

“ _\--about Motorcity?_ ” says a voice from the projected screen, staticky and faint.  Mike is sitting in a chair against a backdrop of Deluxian white, helmet on one knee, looking dirty and battered and even more distant than he did during the previous video.

“ _I don’t know, sir,_ ” says Mike in the video, and rubs his eyes slowly with one faintly-trembling hand.  “... _I belong in Deluxe sir.  It hurts.  Motorcity is--I’m not what I think it doesn’t make it--it hurts_.”

 _“Continue debriefing, Commander,”_ says the other voice, louder now, recognizable.  The audience shifts, murmuring restlessly; even the youngest child in Motorcity knows the voice of Abraham Kane.

_“I--yes sir--I let the car crash into the building, like I was supposed to, but they came after me and they--someone fired on a civilian area, sir.”_

_“That doesn’t matter, Commander.”_

_“Yes sir it hurts.”_

_“Continue debr--”_

“Alex,” says Mike, and Harley twitches, fingers tapping the pause button.  He looks back at Mike, who doesn’t say anything, just grimaces a little and opens his hands very slightly, palms up.

Harley turns back around.  “I--well--I think you get the idea.”

“Ob _jec_ tion!” cries the Duke, jabbing an accusing finger at the stand.  “Why doesn’t the accused want us to see the rest of the video?!  And why is Baby Blues here doing whatever he says?  Seems _fishy_ to me!  Not least because he mentioned crashing a car into a building-- _my_ building!  Which is my _home_!”

“Or mine,” adds Tennie quietly.  The other Cablers in the crowd and on the nearby platforms of the settlement nod and grumble.  

“I was just showing you--he kept saying that.   _‘It hurts’_ ,” says Harley awkwardly.  “It’s--there’s no need to make him watch what Kane--”

“There is _every_ need!”  The Duke says.

“Listen up, you,” starts Jacob--Mike reaches out and grabs his arm, mouth tight, forehead creased.

“I’m okay,” he says, “--it was dumb, I’m okay, seriously.  It’s okay.”

“It sure ain’t,” says Dutch.

“It’s not like he’s here,” Mike says, and glances up at the people watching them with something a lot like embarrassment in his eyes.  “...Guys, come on.”

“I...agree,” says Tennie, although it clearly irritates her to be in accordance with the Duke.  “Keep playing it.”

Harley nods slowly and turns back to his screen.  The video jitters.  Continues.  

“-- _briefing_ ,” Kane’s voice finishes.  “ _We’re not here to discuss your_ feelings _, Commander Chilton_.”

“...Yes sir.”  In the video, Mike takes a few deep breaths and straightens his back, wincing.  “ _There was...this huge tank, sir, insane amounts of firepower, it fired into the city and it brought down a building.  There were people--there--people, inside, there, there, there_ \--” he blinks, shaking himself out of the loop, and continues like nothing happened.  “- _-there were--no people inside.  But.  There was somebody on the ground, sir.  A civilian.  He almost died, sir._ ”

“ _How is this related to your mission, Chilton?_ ”

Mike shrinks a little bit, startled by the harshness of the words, his eyes wide and confused; it’s agonizing to watch.  “ _...Sorry, Mister Kane._ ”

“Hey!”

Harley hits pause again, looking almost relieved to hear the voice from the crowd.  Mike, who’s been sitting slumped since the video restarted, eyes closed and shoulders tight, jumps and stares around as somebody elbows their way forward.  A middle-aged man, with dark blue hair shaved into a mohawk.  

“That was me,” he says, a little breathless.  “I was there.”

Mike looks up, squinting at the guy for a second, and then his eyes go wide with sudden recognition.  “You’re okay?”  He sits forward, smiling, lighting up.  “You’re okay!  That’s great, man!  I wanted to stay and make sure, but I--I had orders.”  He shudders a little at the words, but continues, “Whose place was that?  Are they okay?”

“Is this relevant?” says the Duke suddenly.  Since the video restarted, he seems to have become strangely more withdrawn, arms folded sulkily over his thin chest.  More than one pair of eyes turned to his corner when Mike mentioned the tank in the video.

“It could be,” says Tennie, and then, pointedly, “ _I’ll_ stop him if it isn’t.”

“Well--everyone’s been living in everyone else’s houses these days anyway,” says the blue-haired man awkwardly.  “With all the gangs busting up the city--”

“At Chilton’s instigation,” Rayon adds coolly.

“What, like that makes it better?” snaps the man, and then tightens his lips abruptly, apparently realizing who he just talked back to. Rayon’s brows draw together forbiddingly, but he doesn’t snap back.

“What’s your name, anyway?” says Mike, who hasn’t looked away from the guy since he stood up.  “I was gonna ask, but like I said--”

“ _Definitely irrelevant!”_

Tennie bangs the pipe again, three times in quick succession, glaring at the source of the outburst.  “Shut up, Duke!”

“His _name_?  This isn’t a meet-and-greet, Your Hhhonor!”

“His name could be important when I ask the questions I have for him!” Tennie growls.  “Also, you don’t pronounce the H in honor.  Now _shut up_ _!_ ”

The Duke goes red.  Tennie draws herself up, sitting as tall as she can, and glares back.  Number Two steps silently to the Duke’s shoulder and pops a bubble, and Bracket steps up behind his daughter and lays a huge, protective hand on her shoulder, frowning thunderously and way, _way_ too big to intimidate.

“Guys,” says Mike, openly distressed, “Come on, this isn’t what we’re here for.”

“I’ve got this under control,” says Tennie, ostensibly to Mike but also, Dutch thinks, probably to everyone else in the room.  Bracket removes his hand from her shoulder but doesn’t sit back down, eyes still fixed beadily on the Duke.

“Now…” says Tennie, turning back to the man in the crowd.  “What’s your name?”

“Um.  Drew Yamamoto,” says Drew, still clearly unnerved by the attention directed at him.

“And you ran into Mike when he was...working for Kane?”

“He saved my life!  I mean, I didn’t know it was him at the time--”

There’s another rustle from the gangs, but Tennie turns a baleful eye on them and they settle down long enough for Drew to finish, “I mean, he was wearin’ a helmet and, you know, the good old White and Blue.  Great big K on his chest.  But when that limo got shot through my apartment building he pushed me out of the way when it came down.  There was a lot of concrete comin’ down, I thought for sure he wasn’t gonna get up afterward--”

“That explains the bruises on your back!” says Harley suddenly, turning back to Mike with wide eyes.  “There was nothing in the mission manifest to explain where those came from, I was _wondering_ \--”  
“Can we confirm that the person that helped Mister Yamamoto _was_ Mike Chilton?” asks Tennie sharply. “Harley, you said you designed the suit.  What did it look like?”

“Uh--oh.” Harley clears his throat, coloring, and taps a few keys.  A still flies up onto the screen.  It’s Blue--Mike--in full uniform, the glossy, blank mask staring impassively out at the crowd.  There are scribbled notes drawn on the picture, pointing to various bits and pieces; Alex presses a few more buttons hastily and they vanish.  “Sorry--working model, um--this was the version he was wearing for the mission to...that guy’s mansion. With the...giant tank.”  He grimaces.  The Duke mumbles something obviously derisive to Number Two but, apparently wary of being told to shut up again, doesn’t comment.

“That’s him!” says Drew, glancing from Mike to the picture.  “Wow.  I had no idea, man...crazy.  Your voice sounded totally different, too.”

“Voice filters,” says Harley.  “Kane asked me to build them into the helmet.  And it had holo-tech, too!  For camouflage, since he was supposed to be incognito for the first phase.  And anyone who was fighting him today should recognize the suit too, even without the helmet.”  A flicker of pride, “--it’s a pretty striking design.”

It’s hardly noticeable if you’re not paying attention to the audience, but a series of small commotions started up when the Blue helmet appeared on the screens.  People are talking, nudging each other.  A woman holding a little girl in one arm raises her other hand high, and after a moment someone else follows suit.

“Why didn’t you say something before?” asks Tennie, addressing Drew while her eyes move over the crowd, where more and more people are raising their hands nervously into the air.

“I didn’t really recognize the suit,” says Drew.  Harley wilts a little.  “I mean, all those Deluxe digs look the same to me.  But he started talkin’ about that building that fell over, and there’s no way I could forget that creepy helmet.”

A few of the other people looking for Tennie’s attention nod in agreement.

“Ma’am,” says Tennie, pointing to the woman with the child in one arm.  “What did you want to say?”

“Alisha says she met him too,” says the woman, whose voice is significantly softer than Drew’s.  The crowd has to go dead silent just to hear her.  “She says--well, she wandered off when we were running errands last week--the Skylarks were out, we were looking all over for her, and when she came back she said a _ghost_ helped her--and now she says it was him.”  She points at the photo, then starts, looking embarrassed, and gestures to Mike instead.  “I--well, I wouldn’t have said anything, except when we saw her again she’d scraped her knee and someone had put a Kane Co. band-aid on it?”

“I’m still wearing it!” Alisha announces, kicking out one leg to display a grimy blue-and-white strip on one knee.

“Inadvisable,” murmurs Harley.  Chuck glares at him.  Mike waves at the little girl and she waves back and then hides her face in her mom’s neck.

Tennie looks from Alisha and her mother to Drew, and then to the rest of the hands waving in the air, and then finally to the Cabler who’s been furiously recording the trial on a sky-blue screen to one side of the podium.  “Make sure you get all the names, Coil.”

“You got it!” says the Cabler, taking a moment to flex their fingers with an expression of determination on their face.  “Who’s next?”

“You!” calls Tennie, and then, as the boy starts to speak, “...Can we pass a microphone around?  Someone get a mic.  The Duke’s other mic.  Oh, calm down, you’ll still have one left and you’ll get ‘em all back later!”

There are fifteen witnesses in all, including one Cabler who was trapped under a fallen support pillar after Mike crashed into the colony.  “He broke the thing in half with some kind of...pulse from his gloves,” she says, almost admiringly.  “And then he lifted the rest off of me!  It was some really neat tech.”

“That was all me,” says Harley, glancing surreptitiously at Jacob.  Jacob raises his eyebrows but doesn’t comment, and after a moment Harley turns back to the crowd, looking sweaty and flustered.

Then there’s the old woman who was trapped on the second floor of an unstable, half-destroyed building who claims to have jumped down into the arms of the man in Kane Co. colors because she couldn’t see any other way out.  There’s the girl who saw someone in a helmet digging through the rubble for trapped civilians after the battle of midtown.  There’s the family of four who were almost run down in the chaos of a car chase before a blue shadow drew the gangs’ attention away from their neighborhood.  It goes on and _on_ , until eventually Coil wearily taps the last few keys in their report and pauses with a soft sigh, cracking their knuckles.

And then it’s left for Harley to confirm the stories, pulling up the official mission reports from his files, and finish his account of Mike’s time in Deluxe, ending with Kane’s final plan for the destruction of Motorcity.

“...and from what I saw, he came closer than any of you want to admit,” he finishes stubbornly, folding his arms over his chest.  “So...I guess Mike Chilton and his Burners saved the day again!”  There’s something stilted and parodical about his tone when he says _Mike Chilton and his Burners_ that suggests an imitation, possibly of Kane’s morning news segments.  “If anything, you should be glad he had too many moral issues to keep following Mis--Kane’s orders, because if he’d kept inciting riots like that you’d probably have killed each other off!”  For a second he sounds almost triumphant, putting the pieces together neatly into a conclusion--then he seems to remember the situation.  He deflates a little bit.  “...He didn’t...really do anything to deserve any of this,” he says, a little plaintively, and Mike makes a sort of strangled noise like he can’t decide whether to laugh or groan.  “He wasn’t responsible for his actions.”

“So who was?”  The Duke mutters, snide and carrying and pointed, and Alex flushes.  “ _Nice duds, Stretch, where’d those come from?_ ”

“Kane!”  Harley retorts.  “I mean--he was responsible for--not my clothes--well, technically those too--”

“Order!”  Tennie snaps.  “Does anybody else have anything to say?”

There’s a long, anticipatory kind of pause, but nobody else volunteers any more stories, good or bad.  Tennie takes a long, slow look around the audience, and then nods and bangs a fist on the pipe in front of her again.  

“Okay,” she says, and raises her voice, looking somewhere beyond the gathered crowd, to the people watching on screens all across the city.  “Then you all know what you have to do.  Send a message, 1 for innocent, 9 for...guilty.  One vote per person, and we’ll know if you’re spamming, so don’t, okay?  We’ll keep the line open for fifteen minutes.”  She hesitates for just a second, not looking at Mike, and then finishes, softer, “...think carefully, okay Motorcity?  I know what I’m going to choose.”


	15. The Beginning of the End!  Will You Stand and Fight?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The verdict is found, and everything gets almost immediately worse. A surprise guest gives the people of Motorcity a little inspirational push.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This sure is the chapter that ended up being 16k words long and getting trimmed down! So the battle will all be in Chapter 16, and we should be able to wrap it all up in Chapter 17. And then of course we'll have some fun treats and extras in a little...omake chapter, I guess? That's what they called it back in the good ol' days on FF.net. This fic has been in the works since October of 2015, can you believe it? I don't think we had any idea it was going to get this long, or how we were going to make half the things we had planned happen! Plenty of time for nostalgia after we've finished, though, I guess. Enjoy!

[ ](http://toastyhat.tumblr.com/private/image/157116125374/tumblr_ol8bfnYdUJ1rpgisp)

Ten minutes isn’t a long time to gather votes from an entire city, but it feels like an eternity sitting on the platform watching the timer slowly tick down. Near the back of the crowd, a small gaggle of over-enthusiastic Motorcitizens are trying to start up a chant of _“Mike, Mike, Mike!”_ but it doesn’t seem to be catching on.  The gang leaders have drawn closer to the stage now that the trial is nearing its end, clearly ready to act should the Burners try anything before the verdict is announced.

“This is killin’ me,” mutters Dutch, who’s been pacing the perimeter of the platform since the voting started.  He sends a sidelong glance at the terminal where the Cablers are screening and collecting responses.  “Isn’t there...some way to keep us in the loop?”

“No time,” mutters the nearest Cabler, the one named Coil who acted as stenographer during the trial.  “But if you wanna try something--”  They flick an adjacent screen in the Burners’ direction, eyes still fixed on their work.  “--Go nuts.”

“Uh, here,” says Chuck, pulling the screen towards him and flipping it around to enter a few new lines into its base code.  “Uh... _if input “1”...add units…”_

“What are you doing?”

“Making a live bar graph to show the number of votes,” mumbles Chuck.

“So you can make it look like Chilton’s winning?” asks Foxy coolly.  Chuck stops coding for a second to scowl at her.

“ _No_ , but even if I did, it’s not my system, which means the base numbers wouldn’t lie, so you can stop trying to--to--”

“Turn us into the bad guys?” Dutch says.

“Yeah!  That!  Also, here, it’s running.”

“Cool,” says Tennie.  She glances at Mike, who doesn’t seem able to look up at the graph on the screen.  “...Maybe just sit with your friends while it counts up.”

Chuck wordlessly follows her suggestion, edging into the little protective cluster of Burners surrounding Mike’s chair.  Mike doesn’t watch the screen, where Chuck’s makeshift graphic has started tallying up the votes that have already come in.  His eyes are fixed firmly on his hands, which he keeps lacing together in different ways.  Left thumb on top.  Right thumb on top.  Left.  Right.

“What’s on your mind, Cowboy?” asks Julie, watching him fidget.

“He has to know what happened.”  Mike jitters a little in place, bouncing one knee.  No one asks who “he” is, but the Burners share glances behind Mike.  “...He knows I...failed.  I’d bet anything he knows you got me back.  And that the collars are off.  He’ll have a backup plan.”  He smiles, wry and pained and crooked.  “...For some reason he just doesn’t trust me with stuff anymore.”

\--

The warning sirens are the bots’ first targets after the turrets go down.  Kane leans in, watching as on one screen his commanders reach up to their earpieces in unison and then signal their troops, and on another bots stream into the squalid streets of Motorcity, finding speakers and sirens and killing the warning system.  

“You have your orders,” he says, and the bots’ technicians nod and look down at their screens, feeding coordinates and orders into the bots’ AI.  Squadrons split off from the first wave, speeding relentlessly toward Kane’s targets.  “Capture citizens.  Any scurrying rat you see in gang colors…”

“What kinda colors is that, Mister Kane?”

“Tooley,” says Kane, without looking around.  “Go down to the barracks and ask the commanders for a pint of elbow-grease.”

“Oh boy!”  Tooley goes bounding off toward the empty barracks at the foot of the tower, eager to help.  Kane rolls his eyes, turns back to his screens and watches with narrowed eyes as the first target comes into view on one of his screens, glowing in the distance.

“Send my war pod to the Block 0 exit,” he says, and hears feet moving behind him as people rush to follow his orders.  “This has gone on long enough.”

\--

The courtroom has settled into an uneasy susurrus of conversation. Tennie is perched on her barrel, sketching a blueprint with fierce determination as though resolved to distract herself from the verdict until the very last second.  The bar graph is constantly shifting--slower, now, as more and more votes are added to the total, but still wavering worryingly.  It’s too close.  The Burners have spread out now, dealing with their nerves however they can while Mike slumps, half-dozing, in his chair. Texas is near the edge of the platform, throwing kicks and punches into the air with just a little bit too much force; Dutch is having a very quiet, slightly awkward conversation with Bracket, while Chuck picks at a coding project with frenetic energy, his back to the crowd.  

Julie is off to one side, as hidden from the crowd as she can be while staying within eyeshot of the graph. It’s not that she doesn’t want to know, but watching the bars shift slowly from “innocent” to “guilty” and back again is agonizing.

“ _You shouldn’t be down there_ ,” says Claire.  Julie called her three minutes into the voting. “ _I mean--I know you’re gonna anyway, but...you shouldn’t.  It’s crazy-dangerous.  Your dad--_ ”

“I know,” Julie says, for the hundredth time since she started the call.  “I know!  I know, but I can’t leave now.  Even if I wanted to, dad…” she pauses, glances around; nobody is close enough to hear, but she lowers her voice anyway.  “...Dad’s got Deluxe totally locked down.  If he caught me on my way back up…”  She doesn’t finish the sentence--she’s not sure how to.  Claire shivers anyway.

“ _Yeah_ ,” she says quietly, and then rallies.  “-- _but he could still find you!  And he’d find you with Mike, wearing the weird retro clothes, in the middle of Motorcity!_ ”

“I’m going to have to take that chance.”

Claire groans, but doesn’t argue.  “ _Well--what’s going on with the votes now_?”

Julie glances back over her shoulder.  “Still even.  Barely.”

Claire’s mouth twists a little bit.  “ _He’s..._ Mike _, though?  Sure, he’s weird and he kinda smells but he does, like, nothing except running around helping people?  Like some weird...helper...guy...who lives in his car and helps people all the time.  They can’t just…”_ she pauses, brow furrowing.   _“...What are they even gonna do, anyway, if they vote he’s guilty?  What are_ you _gonna do?_ ”

“I don’t know.”  Julie swallows hard, still watching the graph--behind the screen, on the other side of the platform, Rayon is talking to somebody on a holo-comm.  His men are gathered around him, methodically cleaning their weapons.  Every so often, one of them will throw a look at the Burners.  At Mike.  The Duke is settled down on the hood of his car, feet up and cane laid across his stomach, watching the graph change with unwavering intensity, as if he’s waiting for it to somehow slip up and reveal that the Burners are cheating.  One of the Mama’s Boys is weighing a heavy length of iron pipe in one hand; he mutters something to one of the others and then fakes a brutal swing toward the guy’s kneecaps, laughing.  

“...I don’t know,” says Julie again, and forces herself to look back at the screen.  “Look, I need to go.  I need to do something, or I’m going to go crazy.”

“ _You are doing something,_ ” says Claire, “ _You’re talking to your bestie_.”  But she doesn’t say it like she’s really annoyed, and she reaches out and delicately touches her screen as Julie half-smiles.  “ _Be careful out there, okay?  You better be back up here in time for Girls’ Night._ ”

“Yeah,” says Julie, and swallows around the heavy block of stone that seems to have replaced her heart all of a sudden. “...Love you, Claire.”

Claire blinks, and then her expression softens and she sniffs, smiling.  “ _Love you too._ ”

A shadow crosses Julie as the comm window closes, and she glances up just in time to see the massive silhouette of Bracket as he strides across the platform, up towards his daughter.

“Tennie.”

“Kinda busy, Dad,” says Tennie tensely, looking up at the screen and then back to her blueprints, scowling.

“This is important,” says Bracket quietly.  “We got signals comin’ in from the outskirts.  Bad stuff.  Hae needs you to take a look at it.”

Tennie frowns, but nods and makes her way towards an anxious-looking Cabler man with a cluster of red-flashing screens hovering around him.

Mike watches them go, then returns to slowly, methodically wringing his hands.  After a moment, there’s a faint suggestion of movement in the corner of his eye--a pair of familiar ancient brown boots stepping quietly between him and the Burners to his left.

Mike holds very still for a second, jaw clenched, eyes on the ground, and then loses whatever battle he was fighting with himself. Jacob looks down at him as Mike slumps forward in his chair, drags his hands through his hair and lets out a long, heavy breath.

“Jacob,” he says, small and hoarse.  “What if I don’t deserve this?”

“Deserve what?” says Jacob carefully, narrowing his eyes.  Mike gestures vaguely at the crowd, the gathered Cablers, the screen where the votes are still tallying. His Burners, moving restlessly just out of earshot.  His eyes linger there for a second, before he squeezes his eyes shut and shakes off whatever he was thinking.

“...Dunno,” he says, a little helplessly.  “A chance?  All of this.  I _did_ what they say I did, I--I don’t deserve this.”

Jacob sighs, but not angrily.  Mike doesn’t look up at him, just stares at his hands in his lap.  

“Why’d you say a dumb thing like that?”

“I should have thrown Kane out of my head sooner,” says Mike, barely audible.  “I let him...control me, I followed his orders--”

“Listen, kid…”

“--what if that’s what I wanted, what I _want_ , to have him ordering me around again?”  

Jacob looks down at him for a long second, silent and still, and then he reaches out very slowly and rests a hand on top of Mike’s head.

“...Pretty sure that’s not what you wanted,” he says, and gently ruffles up Mike’s hair.  “I think you’re still just lookin’ for what you missed out on.”

“What I--?”  Mike starts, and then Jacob reaches out and pulls him in and he goes very still.  For a second he just sits, frozen in place, hands hovering like he’s not sure what to do with them--then he slumps forward, rests his forehead against one bony shoulder and hugs Jacob back, squeezing his eyes shut.

“... _No kid should hafta grow up without a dad,_ ” says Jacob, and pats his hair again, a little bit awkward.  “You can...y’know, you can miss what you had with somebody and still know they’re bad news.  I, uh...I miss him too, sometimes.  He was my best friend.”

“Mikey?”

Mike sits back, scrubs at his face and gives Jacob a last, slightly wobbly smile.  His eyes are suspiciously wet for a second, but when he swivels around in his chair his voice is steady.  

“What’s up, dude?”

Chuck has an array of screens hovering around him--he looks nervous and pale, but also strangely excited.  The other Burners are trailing behind him, looking confused but interested at the edge in Chuck’s voice.

“So, my graph stopped working,” he says without preamble.  Mike’s smile takes on the slightly bemused edge it tends to have when Chuck is talking computers, but he nods encouragingly anyway.  “--and I couldn’t figure out why, but then I went in manually and I found out there were a bunch of invalid inputs--” he must see the tired way Mike is watching him, because he rushes on.  “--people aren’t just...sending numbers.”

He expands a screen: a constantly-updating list of messages.  Some of them are just a single digit--a 9 or a 1, but most of them…

“1,” Chuck points out, “ _\--We’d be ice cubes without him._ ”

“Kane’s weather doodad,” Jacob murmurs.  

“9,” Mike reads bleakly, watching the numbers scroll by.  “... _’story’s bullcrap’._ ”

“Ignore them!” says Julie, glaring at the message.

“Yeah, they don’t know what they’re talkin’ about!” Texas adds, folding his arms.  “Also I took down the weather doodad, remember?”

Dutch rolls his eyes.  “Sure you did, Tex.”

Texas bristles, but before he can reply Julie takes his screen and keeps scrolling, reading aloud.

_“Mike Chilton personally handed me the keys to my car last year.  He is a very sweet young man and I am enjoying tearing up the road in my new hot rod.”_

“I used to work with this guy!” says Harley, wide-eyed.   _“The Burners saved me and my family last year...we all saw his face when Kane broadcasted, Mike Chilton would never…’_ he must be one of the dissenters!  Uh...refugees.  I haven’t seen him in months, so I thought he probably just got arrested.”

Dutch shakes his head.  “Man, every time I forget how messed up it is up there…”

“Or all the messed-up stuff Kane comes up with,” Chuck adds, still scrolling through votes.  “But hey, some people remembered!  I--I mean, look, it’s someone who helped us fight Kane’s guys after that whole...zombie thing...eurgh.”

“We took care of a lot of trouble last year,” says Mike thoughtfully, looking somehow lighter for a moment.  Then his features seem to sink again--”Pretty sure Kane wouldn’t have sent half that ‘trouble’ down here if I hadn’t ticked him off though.”

“Well, what about the time the Duke framed us?” says Julie reasonably, shrugging.  “Motorcity makes plenty of trouble for itself.”

“Texas is achieving his true potential!”

“Who knows what woulda happened to the city if you _hadn’t_ shown up,” says Dutch.  “Kane wasn’t gonna stop comin’ either way.  So what if you made him mad?  At least you came down here and did somethin’ about it.”

Mike smiles crookedly.  “Hard to argue with you guys.”

“Oh,” says Chuck quietly, and reaches out to hold the list still before the new answers can scroll away.  A handful of messages all in a row; “ _1 for the Smiling Dragon!_ ”  “ _1 for the hero of Raymanthia!_ ”  Chuck grins at them for a second, and then straightens his back a little and pushes himself up.  “I’m gonna go work on the graph.  If it’s not counting all the messages with writing in them, the--the picture could be wrong!”

“Sure,” says Mike, and winces as a “guilty” message scrolls past him, terse and derisive.  “...You do that, buddy.”

“...Two more minutes,” Dutch says softly, very tense.  

Two minutes feels more like a hundred years.  The graph keeps glitching and wavering as Chuck messes with his code, hitting wrong keys as his fingers tremble faintly.  For a heart-stopping second, the votes in the “guilty” column soar.  Then they drop to nothing--the gangs mutter angrily--then they rise again, easing back up to where they were originally.  Chuck hisses something under his breath and pulls the screen completely to keep working, replacing it with the timer.  Dutch walks over to lean over his shoulder,  pointing and murmuring as the seconds count down.  One minute.  Thirty seconds.

Tennie is on her feet the moment it reaches zero, but her voice isn’t the one that breaks the silence.

“That’s time,” Rayon says, and there’s a series of faint but distinct clicks as his men shift their grips on their guns.  “What’s our verdict?”

“Give them a second,” says Tennie, eyes fixed on the group of Cablers gathered around their screens.  Her voice is steady, but her back is ramrod-straight and her eyes are blazing-hard.  

“I’ll go help.”  Chuck starts to get up--Bracket puts a huge hand on his shoulder.

“No, son,” he says.  “You’re going back over there.”

“What?”

“You’re a Burner,” says Bracket.

“Yeah, but we’re not gonna cheat,” says Dutch.  Bracket nods, but doesn’t stand aside.  Dutch’s hands work--he nods back tersely and grabs Chuck’s arm, pulling him back toward the other Burners.

Mike glances up and smiles as they rejoin the group, but his smile is very small and tight.  The air in the room has changed again; there’s a sense of finality and foreboding, heavy with the anticipation of the tipping point, the moment will events will cascade one way or another.  Fingers move on triggers.  Eyes meet through the crowd.  Everyone is on their feet, and no one is chanting anymore.  It’s dead, deafening silence.

And then the cluster of Cablers pull back from their screens and share nods of confirmation, and the rustle starts in the crowd, low and almost inaudible.  One of them passes a blue file window to Tennie, who studies for a moment, impressively and agonizingly impassive, and then approaches her podium, wrench in hand.  The rustle is escalating now, voices rising in the crowd; cheers, angry shouts, arguments and scuffles.  The Burners draw even closer around Mike, practically obscuring him from view, ready to fight if things go south.  For just a moment, Tennie looks back at them, her face stern and serious.

And then she gives Dutch the tiniest of smiles, and as she turns back he feels his heart leap in his chest.

“Due to extenuating circumstances,” Tennie announces, “...we hereby declare Mike Chilton _not guilty!_ ”  And she brings her wrench down on the pipe in front of her with a final, victorious BANG.

“Oh, _boo!_ ” snarls the Duke of Detroit.  “At least give the boy community service!”  

“Oh, yeah right,” Chuck snipes under his breath.  “So, you can just keep doing what you were doing before, Mikey.”

“I think I could use a break first, Chuckles.” Mike is smiling, as as tired as he still looks, the verdict seems to have lifted a weight off his shoulders.  He sits back in the chair, tips his head back and just turns his face to the distant ceiling for a minute--then he shakes off whatever was going through his head and sits up again.  “We can talk community service after--”

For a second it’s not clear why he cuts off, eyes going wide--why he sits up straight, staring out over the crowds’ heads into the darkness of Motorcity.  But a second later, everybody else hears it too.  

A faint but distinct whirring thrum of energy in the air.  A sudden, barely-discernable shift in the air.  Far away, across the dark expanse of the city, faint gleams of red light.  

Mike gapes at the view for a split second, and then shakes himself awake and forces himself upright.  “He’s here!”  he says urgently.  “He’s taking down the borders--I told you he was coming, he’s _here_ , where’s my staff?   _Uhf_.”  His bad leg just wobbled alarmingly under him--he sits down fast and hard.  “--guys?”

Dutch clears his throat uncomfortably and produces the staff. One half has collapsed back into half a warped skull, and the other half is too bent and damaged to even retract.  Mike’s face falls.  

“Oh, right,” he says, and scrubs at his face with both hands.  “Okay--okay, shoot.  We’ll...fix it later.  Does somebody have a pipe or something?”  And then, before anyone can answer, “--Wait--where are they going?”

The gangs are moving.  Foxy was first on her feet, raising a hand--”Back to base, ladies”--but they’re all on their feet now, filtering toward their parked cars, a good third of the crowd.  The rest of the room’s occupants move aside for the gangs, apparently glad to see them go, but Dutch sees Mike’s eyes narrow and in the next second Mike’s on his feet again.  He manages to take a single step forward, and then he sways dangerously and Dutch springs forward to grab his arm.  Texas appears on Mike’s other side, pulling an arm over his shoulder and thumping his back--once very hard, and then a little softer when Mike grimaces.

“We got you, Tiny, just say what you were gonna say, okay?  Okay.”

Mike flashes Texas a grin, then swallows hard and shouts, “Where do you guys think you’re going?”

His voice is hoarse and small compared to the noise of the crowd, but somehow--maybe because everyone’s spent all day listening hard for the sound of his voice--it seems to carry to the ears of the exiting gang members.

“Out!” snaps the Duke without looking back.  Ahead of him, Number 2 elbows her way unceremoniously through a cluster of denim-clad figures.

“What about Motorcity?”  Mike sounds almost like a reprimanding parent, shocked and disappointed by an unrepentant child.  A few of the gangs actually falter, sharing small, almost imperceptible looks.

“We’re protecting the parts of Motorcity that matter to _us_ ,” says Rayon after a moment.  “Our territory--”

“We all live here,” Mike says, and it’s very nearly a snap, cutting Rayon off in mid-sentence.  “All of Motorcity should matter to you!”

Foxy flips her ponytail and glares back at Mike, although Dutch notices some of her followers seem unwilling to look at him.  “That’s cute, kid, but we didn’t come down here from Deluxe to _save the city_.  We’re not like you.”

“Well--maybe you should be!” says Mike, and although he’s clearly still angry, there’s a beseeching note in his voice now too.  “This is your home too!”

“You may have won this round, _Chilton_ , but it doesn’t mean anyone has to listen to you,” drawls the Duke, deigning to glare at Mike over his shoulder.  “Doesn’t matter what cock-a-doodle you’re spouting now, everyone knows what you did!  Get back!!”

Mike pulls his arm away from Texas’s shoulders, and for a horrible moment Dutch thinks he’s going to run at the Duke.  But Mike just pulls up a screen, scrolling through a series of video files with clumsy, battered fingers.  Harley, who’s retreated anxiously from the podium to peer over Mike’s shoulder, says, “What...is _Mutt_ and why do you have twenty-nine files named after it?”

Mike doesn’t answer, which says a great deal about how hard he’s concentrating.  Right at the bottom of the column, there’s a file labeled _mycity_.  He taps it and then, with a flick, sends it flying to Chuck’s console.  “Buddy.”

“Uh...sure.  Just--what is it…?”

“You’ll see,” says Mike.  “There’s no time, just get it up there where everyone can see it, okay?”

“What’s he doing?” says Tennie, narrowing her eyes. The rest of the gangs, hesitating near the exits, seem to be wondering the same thing.  There’s an anticipatory, somewhat suspicious thrill in the air.

Mike doesn’t answer her directly, addressing the crowd as a whole instead.  “I get it, if you don’t want to listen to me now!  But maybe you’ll listen to _this_.”

The video winks into existence all around the settlement, not just on one big screen anymore but at least ten synchronized panels.  All of them show Mike, with that half-smiling, direct look on his face--the one that sees right into your soul and believes unreservedly in what it finds there.  Julie sees gang members actually turning away from the screens, staring fixedly at the floor.  Even Rayon seems to have found a point somewhere in the middle of the room to direct his cool, shaded gaze.

 _“Hey, guys!”_ says Mike on the screen.  The background is instantly recognizable to the Burners--he’s in the garage below the hideout, sitting on Mutt’s hood.  And it hits Julie all of a sudden just how different he is from the Mike to her right. Mike has always had shadows carved under his eyes, but she didn’t realize how much worse they’d gotten.  Mike in the video looks almost younger somehow, whole and clean and...normal.

She thinks maybe Mike has noticed it too, from the way his jaw tightens and his eyelids flicker.  But his gaze stays strong, focused on the video.

_“I heard what you guys did while I was on vacation in Deluxe the other day and I gotta hand it to you...that’s some impressive stuff!  That’s what I call teamwork.”_

For a second he just smiles out at them, eyes warm and dark in the dim light of the garage.  There’s a neon light throwing a soft golden glow over the angles of his sharp cheekbones and his nose, gleaming off the brown of his hair.  Julie reaches out--in this moment, she can’t stop herself--and rests a hand on Mike’s shoulder.  He doesn’t looks at her, just turns his head a fraction of an inch, acknowledging her comfort silently, never taking his eyes off the screen.  On his other side, Chuck has a shaking grip on one of Mike’s bruised hands, holding on tight.  

“ _I didn’t know if I was ever going to get out of that cell alive_ ,” says Mike in the video, and even after everything that’s happened in the past few weeks the ache of losing Mike the first time still makes several of the Burners wince at the words.  “ _But I told Kane Motorcity would never stop fighting him, no matter what he did to me, and--well, you guys didn’t let us down._   _Sure, we’ve fought in the past.  I know I sure don’t trust some of you as far as Tex could throw you!  But when the chips were down, you really did it.”_

He pauses, smiling and scratching the back of his head, holding the room in silent, intent thrall.   _“Geez, okay, what was I gonna say next…”_

“I didn’t have time to cut it down,” murmurs Mike in response to a look from Harley.  “Your call came in a couple minutes later.”

Harley winces and looks abruptly away, even though Mike’s tone is astonishingly lacking in accusation.

“ _I’m not gonna lie, some of you are pretty rough,_ ” says video Mike, with half a laugh in his voice, and a ripple of almost-laughter rolls across the crowd in response.  “ _I’m looking at you, Duke_.”  A real laugh this time.  The Duke scowls and mutters something inaudible to Number 2, who says a few words in response and goes back to snapping her gum with a faint smile on her face.

_“But you came together to protect the city...which is what the Burners do every day!  I know there’s a lot going on with you guys that I don’t get--like, politics and stuff.  But when you put all those things on hold to work as a team...well, that’s a big deal.  So that’s how I know you...well, you guys love this city, like me.  I know no matter what happens, we can’t lose to Kane.”_

“And I stand by that!” says Mike as the video cuts out.  “We don’t have time and if we don’t act fast, Kane’s army is gonna crush us!”  He directs a very pointed look at the gangs.  “All of us.”

“He’s right,” says Julie.  It makes her legs weak to draw attention to herself right now, like this, but the thought of Motorcity as a dead, smoking wreck makes her keep going.  “I was up there, I saw them!  He’s bringing _everything_.”  She gives Rayon a slightly accusatory look--his shoulders go stiff and he lowers his shades to look back at the Burners, eyes narrowed.

“Are you telling me this is supposed to be his final play?”

“Yeah,” says Mike gravely.  “He used to want to exploit us like he did in Deluxe-- _building a better world from Motorcity’s ashes._ ”  His lip twists, an unexpectedly bitter edge on his bruised features.  “...But he gave up on building something new down here a while ago.  This was his plan the whole time--just...destroying everything.”  

“If Kane’s whole army is gonna be here…”  Dutch is frowning, eyes wide with slow realization.  “--Dar!  Oh man, he’s gotta be with ‘em!”

“Can you call him sound-only?”  Julie glances around at the milling Motorcitizens around them, then throws caution to the winds and pulls up a Deluxian screen, scrolling through the cadet directory as fast as she can.  “He’s listed active, he must be on his way down.”

“Oh man,” Dutch says again, strangled and tense, and kicks a piece of scrap over.  “No, no no no, what if he gets hurt--?!”

“We’re not going to let that happen,” says Mike.  “We’re not gonna hurt people today!”  That’s said to the rest of the platform--the gangs turn to look at him, startled.  “These guys are doing the wrong thing, but if we…”  He catches a little on the words, then keeps going, determined.  “If we kill them...we’re exactly what Kane says we are.  I know you guys aren’t murderers.  So we’re gonna keep this nonfatal, okay?!”  He looks back at Dutch.  “Try to call him.  Maybe he can get away from them--if we give him a map, he’ll make it here faster than they will.”

“Yeah.”  Dutch is already dialing, pacing feverishly as the comm dials, trying to go through.  “Come on, come on…”

“We need a plan,” says Julie, her heart hammering in her throat.  “Kane’s had weeks to figure out a strategy!  We have to get organized or we’re gonna lose!”

“The Cablers are still with you,” Bracket rumbles.  “The rest of these hoodlums too, probably.”  He casts the gangs a distasteful glance, and although several members balk at the comment, they seem too cowed to talk back.

Tennie strides up, gloved hands in fists at her sides.  “Julie, Mike...whatever your name is.”

“Alex Harley.”

Tennie nods curtly.  “You worked with Kane.  Where do we start?”

“We’ve got to split his forces somehow,” says Harley.  His face is very, very pale.  “If he brings the entire Security Department down here, we’ll all--”

“That’s not going to happen,” Mike cuts him off very firmly--rubs the bridge of his nose like he’s got a headache, squeezing his eyes shut.  “You’re right though.  Divide and conquer.”

“We’ve got the advantage on the ground,” Julie points out.  “We need decoys.  I don’t have enough range to distract the whole army with my image-distortion cloak though.”

“It’s not just us any more though,” Mike points out, and looks out at the crowd.  “We...we’ve got to...use the resources we have.”  He pulls a face, like saying the words leaves a bad taste in his mouth.  

“So we distract him into splitting up his troops.”  Tennie frowns. “Kane’s going to keep coming, and that war-pod is too big to short out on our network.”

“We need to stop him before he can get here.”  Rayon sounds reluctant to join the discussion, but he strides forward anyway.  “We don’t have firepower to stop him.  Put enough people on him to stop the war-pod, we don’t have enough to split his troops. ”

“I’ll go,” says Mike.  All eyes turn to him; a rustle of shock and disbelief goes around the makeshift courtroom.

“Mikey,” mutters Chuck urgently, “what are you doing?  You’re not okay, dude!”

“I can do this,” says Mike, just to Chuck, quiet and confident.  And then, for everyone to hear, “I’m the only one Kane is gonna stop for!  You all know it and we _don’t_ \--”  He chokes, one hand going to his throat, but waves away the other Burners’ attempts to help and goes on, taking care not to raise his voice as much.  “We don’t have time to argue!  You have to let me go out there!”

“How do we know you ain’t just gonna run?”  The Duke demands.  Mike turns and looks him dead in the eyes the Duke actually jumps a little, raising his hands defensively.

“That’s not me and you know it,” says Mike, cutting-harsh with honesty.  “ _I’ve_ never turned my back on Motorcity.  Not if I had a choice.”

The Duke’s mouth opens and shuts soundlessly a couple of times, and then he adjusts his sunglasses and looks sharply away.  Mike’s mouth twitches at the corner, a smile without much humor in it.  

“Okay,” says Chuck doggedly, refusing to be distracted, “--but you can barely walk, dude!”

“I’m serious, dude, it’s gotta be me.  I can’t fight his army, but--Kane won’t stop his war-pod for anybody else.”  

Mike’s eyes flicker to Julie again.  Julie feels a sick swoop in her gut at the look on his face--like he’s imagining the same scene she is, for just a second.  Julie, taking Mike’s place in the crosshairs.  Her dad’s fury and betrayal.  Mike’s face twists painfully.  He looks away again.

“What’s he sending first?”  He asks, and Chuck clears his throat and hastily pulls up a screen.  

“Drones,” he says, a second or two later, and feeds pop up on his screens as he brute-forces through the security on a hundred security cameras.  “We got--holy crap.”  His voice jumps dramatically up toward the next octave as more and more images appear; a wide-open hole in the Deluxian roof, spilling down brilliant white light.  Bots are spiralling down through the hole, throwing dark, darting beams of shadow onto the distant city below, cameras gleaming red.  “--a _lot_ of drones, Mike!”

“So we gotta mount an offence,” says AJ.  “On the triple, hut-hut!”

“We’re safe from the bots here, if they’re just drones,” Bracket says grimly.  “But everybody out there…”

“I could really use the chopper,” Mike murmurs to Chuck and Dutch.  “I didn’t get a chance to look when I was driving, did you…?”

“It’s there,” says Dutch.  “But there are some new--”

“Great!  Thanks, be right back!”

“Hwell.  Have fun with that.”  The Duke stretches, exaggeratedly casual, and turns to his limousine, snapping his fingers.  “Some of us have territory to protect.”

“Now you just listen here,” Jacob starts belligerently.  Chuck grabs his arm and shakes his head.  “What?!  You kids are out there riskin’ your darn lives and this guy’s gonna go bury his head in the sand until it blows over?  How’s that right?!”

“I’d rather have him hiding out than selling out,” says Julie, and her expression as she watches the Duke’s limousines back out and pull away is fiercely disgusted, startlingly cold.  “We’re better off without him.”

“Anybody else who’s going should go,” says Bracket, and takes a long, challenging look at the crowd.  The gangs shift and mutter, and then stand defiantly where they are.  A good fraction of the citizens leave quickly and quietly after that, pulling up calls to family or friends as they go, spreading the word-- _get out of the city, Kane is coming._

It’s a dispiriting moment, watching the crowd shrink.  There’s a bleak, uneasy quiet as everybody glances at each other, waiting for somebody else to make a break for it.  

Then, across the platform, there’s a familiar growling bark of revving engine.  Mike was only gone for a couple of minutes, but even so every Burner relaxes just at the reminder that he’s still here, and none of them has to so much as glance at the others before they’re all hurrying toward the echoing sound of Mutt’s growling engines.

Mike is already wheeling the motorcycle over when the Burners finally manage to extract themselves from the remainder of the crowd and break into the open air closer to the platform’s edge.  Harley trails behind them like a shy kid in a room full of strangers, breathless and more than a little bit shell-shocked by the enormity of the situation he’s fallen into.  When he sees the motorcycle, his mouth drops open.

“You figured out how to get it out already?”  Dutch grins.  “Shoulda figured.  Changed the mechanism, but I guess you noticed.”

“Yeah.”  Mike flips down the kickstand and pushes himself up, grinning a grin that’s a little crooked with bruising.  “Saw where you put it, so I just found a road with a 180 flip, braked at the top and--”

“You _what_?!”  Chuck squawks, somewhere between laughing and horrified.  “Mike!  There’s a button, there’s--it’s just a button!  You just press it!  Please tell me you didn’t wreck Mutt again already!”

“Hey, I landed the flip,” Mike says, mock-injured but grinning.  “Don’t worry, she’s not even dented.”

“I’m not even gonna ask how you pulled that one off,” says Dutch.  “But okay, cool.”

“What is that?” says Alex, edging wide-eyed towards the bike, goggling at every lovingly-crafted curve and angle of her frame. “That’s--that’s not a car, I’ve never seen a car that looked like that.”

“Motorcycle,” says Mike, and swings a leg over the seat, settling back and wincing.  “Chuckles, gonna need you to stay behind on this one.  They need you guys back here.” Can I count on you guys to send him my way?”

Chuck glances at the busy crowd and their half-assembled defenses.  Back at Mike, back to the defenses, and then he rakes his hands through his hair, groans and gives up.  

“Fine, okay!  But--Mike--”

“I’ll be fine,” says Mike.  Chuck pulls his hair back away from one eye and gives him such a sharp look he sits up straight, shoulders squaring automatically.  “Seriously!  Dude, I swear I’ll be okay.  Okay?”

“Where’s the external framework?”  Alex reaches out a hand toward the exhaust pipes, still staring, and then jumps as Mike settles back and revs the engine.  “Whoa!   _Wow_.”

“Alex, help them,” Mike says firmly, and it’s not quite an order but Harley straightens immediately to attention as if it was.  “The Cablers have some of the best engineers and the biggest power source in the city, if there’s anywhere you can take down his army, it’s here.  You want a chance to prove you can do better, this is it.”

“Oh,” says Harley, who doesn’t look entirely pleased by the concept.  “Oh, well, I…”

“You’ll do great,” says Mike firmly.  “You both will.  You’re smart guys.  Now…I need to go somewhere he’ll definitely find me.  I need to stand out, and it’s gotta be me on my own.  Tex, no.”

Texas, who had opened his mouth to protest, shuts it again, looking resentful and more than a little worried.

“I know the perfect place,” says Dutch, pulling up a map on one of his purple screens and tapping a spot on it.  “Here.  Need me to send coordinates?”

Mike frowns, squinting at the screen.  “Nah, that won’t work…there’s too many people living there, we’d have to evacuate--”

“Well, not...anymore,” says Dutch, and then, as Mike’s eyes go distant and horrified with returning memories, “-- _But_ it is the perfect place for you to lure Kane to!  You’ll see when you get there.  It’s not as bad as you think.”

“Okay,” says Mike, and it’s obviously an effort to keep his voice even, but the word barely even wavers.  “Sure.  Chuck, what’s the ETA on the first wave?”

“Eight minutes twenty-two seconds,” says Chuck, tight with strain. The words spread out from the clearing around the Burners, bouncing from person to person, and Chuck winces a little bit, lowering his voice like he only just remembered the rest of the crowd was there.  “...Mike, you should have somebody with--”

Mike just looks at him, smiling, eyes tired.  Chuck cuts himself off, chewing on his lip, jittering miserably from foot to foot.

“I can make midtown in fifteen,” says Mike.  “There’s some shortcuts I can take on this thing I can’t take in Mutt.  But you guys are gonna have to take the first wave of bots outta the air before I get there.”  He rubs his battered leg absently, like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it.  “I’m not really...at my best here.”

“So we just gotta make some scrap.”  Texas slams a fist into the opposite palm, and grins a grin with just a little too much bared tooth.  “Trash some bots!”  He stops a second, then throws a glance back over his shoulder at the milling gangs and motorcitizens.  “...Texas can think of a couple jerks who don’t totally suck at that.”

“Sounds like somebody needs a bot-wrangler.”  Junior slouches out of the crowd, hands shoved in the pockets of his overalls.  He throws Texas a challenging look and raises his only visible eyebrow.  “What, you ain’t gonna go all crying like a girl ‘cause we bash these bots?”

“These bots are Kanebots,” says Texas, stolidly defensive.  “And, uh, they’re lame, and ROTH’s not, he’s my buddy.  Why are you talkin’ about that, it’s dumb.”

“Yer _face_ is dumb!” Junior retorts, grinning.  The rest of the Mama’s Boys laugh much too loudly.

Texas draws himself up, looking supremely offended, floundering for words.  “You-- _braces_!”

The Mama’s Boys gasp collectively.

“You take it _back_!”

“It’s his grill, hombre!  Stop gettin’ _in_ it!”

“Hey _Little Man_ , them’s fightin’ words!”

“Then go.  Fight.  Some.   _Bots_ ,” Texas grits out, almost nose-to-nose with his long-time nemesis.  

They maintain eye contact for a good five seconds longer than is comfortable, and then Junior hisses, _“Reckon that’s a good idea,”_ and turns on his heel, spreading his hands to signal the rest of the gang.  “Come on, boys!  If we’re gonna make some bot-iron skillets, we’re gonna need Fabian el Muchacho and the regulars!  Place yer _bets_!”

“Uh, we don’t really have time for bets,” says Mike urgently.  “Does anybody else have anything we can use?  Any kind of weapon, anything we can use at all.”

“Paint,” says Dutch.

Mike opens his mouth--closes it again, and frowns.  “Uh...you’re gonna have to help me out here, dude--”

“Kane’s drones only have one eye,” says Dutch.  “If we block that, they’re sitting ducks.  And they got no way to scrape paint off or reboot it away.”

“Well, we’ve got plenty of paint,” says a slight girl swathed in a heavy, brightly-colored blanket.  “But they’re not gonna come down to us, sir.”

Dutch starts to answer and then sputters.  “I’m not--okay, now, uh--”

ROTH whirrs excitedly and swoops down to their level, gesticulating furiously.  Dutch listens intently to a series of incomprehensible beeps and whirrs, and then shakes his head.

“Way too risky, buddy.”

ROTH jolts him on the arm and gestures even more excitedly.  

“But--your arms--”

ROTH swoops away--there’s a wrenching, metallic noise, and somebody’s decorative enforcer-drone corpse is tugged free of its place over the door.  ROTH lowers it carefully to the ground, takes hold of its motionless metal “arms” and gives a sort of fiddly twist-and-pull.  Dutch gapes at him as he motors back over, holding out the gunmetal-grey arms like an offering.

“Hold up,” says Mike.  “Is he saying what I think he’s saying?”

“...I’d hafta take your paint off,” says Dutch, and ROTH whirrs sadly and takes Dutch’s face in both hands, patting his cheeks.  “He says he can lead the bots down to ground-level.  If he pings them he found some citizens, they’d follow him down.  Then we could tag ‘em.”

“It’s risky,” says Chuck.  “I mean, even if the bots don’t notice you’re...different...the Ultra-Elites could!  Their guns can take down an enforcer drone, easy--two shots and--”

“ROTH’s not an enforcer drone,” says Texas.  “He’s ROTH.”  He reaches out a hand; ROTH takes it and gives it a firm shake.  “You gonna come back okay, little buddy?”

ROTH chirps firmly.  Texas nods.  

“Good enough for Texas,” he says.  “He’s a Burner!  Let him fight like one.”

“Let _everyone_ fight like one,” adds Julie, and Tennie nods in agreement, but Mike looks uneasy.

“Wait, guys--everyone’s taken damage recently, we can’t _make_ them--”

“Oh, I don’t think we’ll have to,” says Tennie, and then, raising her voice, “You’ve done a lot for us, Mike, but you guys aren’t Motorcity’s only line of defense!”

“I train mutant rats!” volunteers a woman in the crowd, and suddenly there’s a chorus of similar responses--

“I can make explosives!”

“I’ve got a bunch of old laser ports in my basement!  You could probably turn ‘em into traps!”

“I own fifty hover-mopeds!”

“The McCutcheon Karate Dojo won’t back down from a fight!”

“We won’t let them walk all over us!”

“Just tell us what to do and we’ll do it,” says a girl at the front of the crowd, and Chuck realizes with a shock that it’s Ruby the Darkslayer, and when she draws her sword--

“That’s--”  He swallows, pulling his hair away from both eyes.  “Did it do that before?”

“A wooden blade may suffice for LARPing,” says Ruby, swinging her new weapon through the air with a dangerous-sounding buzz, “but after the Genesis Pod descended from on high like an angel of death--”

“We made laser swords,” says Thurman, and steps judiciously away from Ruby’s slightly over-enthusiastic swiping.  “They were gonna be a surprise.”

“They--they are!”  Chuck swallows hard, and then tries, “--but you don’t have any training, not against cadets, I mean--”

“I think you mean _invading lesser demons_ ,” says Ruby, and she’s got that gleam in her eyes, dangerously focused.  Thurman glances at Chuck, a little apologetically, and gives his own laser sword a demonstrative swipe in the air.  “We couldn’t get here in time for the voting, but we’re here now, and we’re ready to fight!”

“We’ll take ‘em!”  AJ cocks his rifle showily, spins it and holsters in one motion.  “The Weekend Warriors like their recruits with their boots on the ground, HUT!”

“Indeed,” says Ruby, and then, suspiciously.  “--but you aren’t my lord, you can’t give me orders.  Only Lord V--”

“Okay!”  Chuck waves his hands in the air desperately, and as humiliatingly as his voice cracks and squawks, it at least has the intended effect of distracting Ruby and AJ before anybody can ask who Ruby’s “Lord” actually is.  “Okay, you can go with them, just--be careful okay?  And...don’t...do anything permanent?”

Ruby stares at him for a second, and then sighs and sheathes her sword.  “Okay, fine,” she says.  “But I will slaughter a hundred foes next weekend to make up for it.”

“Deal,” says Chuck fervently.  He watches the LARPers until they vanish into the crowd, and then sags, dragging a hand down his face.  “Geez…”

“We’ve got the people and the homeground advantage,” says Tennie, appearing beside Dutch with one of the Duke’s microphones once again in hand.  “Dad and the gangs agree we still need a way to lead Kane’s troops where we want ‘em, though.”

“Leave that to me,” says Julie immediately.  “I’ve got enough holo-tech in Nine Lives to make ten clones, and more programmed into my personal system.”

Tennie frowns.  “Clones?  Clones of what?”

“The one thing they’ll follow no matter what,” says Julie, looking at Mike.  “Here, stand up for a second--good.  Now hold still, this’ll only take a second…”

“Uh, Jules--”

“ _Still_ , Mike.”

“Holding still,” says Mike, holding his arms slightly out from his sides as Julie scans him from top to toe.

“We’ll need devices to project him if you want him to be moving around the city,” says Chuck thoughtfully.  “...Hey, didn’t that one guy say something about hover-mopeds?  I wonder if they have autopilot.”

“They will when we’re done with ‘em,” says Dutch.  He’s got a rag in his hand, stained with yellow-green, and there’s an ugly swathe of blank gray polymer along ROTH’s side; it looks strange and dead against ROTH’s vivid green paint.  “Mike, we got this.  Just get where you need to be...and come back, okay?”

“Okay,” says Mike, and this time when he pulls on his helmet it’s black and white and Mutt-green, and they can see the smile in his eyes through the visor.  “Be safe, guys.  Let’s do this.”

 

[ ](http://68.media.tumblr.com/cdba8bbaf732873d360ed44a49d6ea02/tumblr_ol82dluMLA1rz9wo6o1_1280.jpg)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PSYCH the surprise guest was Mike from the past


	16. War In The Streets!!  100 Mike Chiltons?!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cadet Dar Gordy steps up and shows initiative as Kane Co. struggles to respond to clowns, graffiti, holograms, mutant rats, and possibly worse than all of the above, Tennie. Chuck and Harley have a "bonding" "experience".

Commander Harrison, head of the J-squad of the Motorcity Invasion Force, surveys his troops.  It’s hard to tell under the masks, but there are little shifts in body language even as they stand at attention.  They’re nervous.

Harrison resists the urge to sigh and instead says in a loud, bracing voice, “Alright, men, how many of you were down here after G-Day?”

Hands go up.  It’s more than expected, which is good, but there’s no denying the fact that today is...different from G-Day.  For one thing, every squad has a containment pod trailing behind them, ready and waiting for any Motorcitizens they might come across in populated areas.  Someone has to work in Deluxe’s factories, after all--although if they miss some people it’s no skin off Mister Kane’s back.

But today is also different because they won’t just be occupying significant landmarks.  To every squad leader’s unspoken anxiety, they’ll actually be down on the backstreets of Old Detroit, following the drones into unknown territory.  Even without the daily Deluxian reminders that Motorcity is a filthy, mutant-infested hive of iniquity, it would have been nerve-wracking.  It’s dark and messy and full of strange, colored lights and--the air is different.

Commander Harrison wouldn’t have noticed if some of the Ultra-Elites hadn’t pointed it out, but now he’s uncomfortably aware of it.  The slight dampness of the air, the unfamiliar smells and the way the temperature _changes_ from place to place.  In Deluxe, temperature and humidity are carefully regulated, significant adjustments being announced in the morning news the day before.

“Good,” says Harrison, and makes the deliberate choice to be the first one to step off the platform that brought them down and onto the cracked, weed-infested pavement.  “Then you know what to expect.”

There’s an uneasy cough behind him and he realizes his mistake too late--the last invasion attempt was a complete disaster.  Inwardly kicking himself, Harrison specifies hastily, “--A bunch of no-good criminals who’ve already worn themselves out trying to kill each other!”

 _That_ gets a cheer.  Harrison breathes out, just the barest scrap of a relieved sigh, and advances through the streets, trying not to look too jumpy in front of his squad.  He’s seen Motorcity once or twice, usually in a security-drone feed--this isn’t what he remembers.  The streets are dark and empty.  The neon lights are shut off, the shops and windows are all empty.  Last time there were people, even if the Elites mostly saw their backs as they scattered.

“Where is everybody?” somebody murmurs from the back of the squad. Somebody else shushes him sharply.  “No, seriously, what--”

Motorcity lights up.

Every single neon light blazes suddenly, eye-stingingly bright, and the squad yells and curses as the walls around them are illuminated.  Leering faces stare down at them from every surface; exaggerated sneers and toothy smiles.  On the buildings ahead of them, a snarling wolf with burning eyes.   _Motorcity lives free_ , somebody has scrawled under it.  Despite himself, a kind of hot, tense shiver runs up Harrison’s back.

“...What did they do to their _pods_?”  The cadet sounds halfway horrified, with a significant streak of admiration.  “It’s...kind of cool.”

“It’s graffiti,” one of the Ultra-Elites snaps, and cuffs him on the back of the head.  “Focus!  We didn’t come down here to goggle at street trash.  Somebody turned those lights on.”

“And we’ll find them.”  Harrison eyes the painted wolf one more time, then shudders and turns away.  “Keep an eye out.  A and B, flank us.  You never know where they’ll sneak up from.”

“Hard to do any sneaking in this light,” mutters a voice behind him--Cadet Garcia, if Harrison had to guess.  Just as insouciant as his father...Harrison will have to have a word with his training officer.

“I don’t have to justify my orders to you,” he grinds out, glaring back at the squad.  “This city is full of crafty little rats who would rather use stealth than--”

“Than drive right at you?” says Garcia, who is apparently prepared to continue his insubordination face-to-face.  For a second, Harrison is honestly almost impressed at his bald-faced disregard for authority, but then he hears the engines and realizes Garcia isn’t looking at him.  He whips around, glaring up the road, searching for the source of the sound.  

For a moment, it remains an invisible threat, a soft rumble bouncing off of crooked walls and concrete walls.  And then a car pulls around a corner, easing to a stop within twenty feet of J-Squad.  Then another one, pulling up next to the first and idling in the bright, multi-colored neon light.  They’re small things, soft edges and curved, friendly shapes, nothing like the heavy deathtrap machines in the briefings.  The sides are painted with bright bubbles of color and smiling faces.

There’s a crackle of weapons cocking; the squad raises their blasters, coming to an uneasy halt as the cars’ headlights shut off and the engines die.

“Attention, motorcity scum,” Harrison shouts, across the empty space between them.  There’s no response from the cars.  “Come out of there, or we’ll open fire!”

There’s another second of silence.  Then, finally, the driver’s side door of one of the cars opens, and a skinny boy climbs out.  He’s got wild hair and his face is daubed in gray and white, in the design of an exaggerated smile.  Harrison looks him up and down, lip curling at his scrawny, underfed physique, thickly-painted face and ridiculously oversized pants and jacket.  The boy looks around, grinning a dopey grin, and then raises his hands as the guns all immediately point at him.

“Whoop whoop, bro,” he says mildly.  “We all was lookin’ for bots but here y’all are instead.”

“Get on the ground.”

The kid gives the street a dubious kind of look.  “Naw bro.”

“Get on the ground and put your hands on your head,” growls Harrison, and levels his gun between the kid’s eyes.  “Or we’ll--”

“Sir!”  one of the Ultra-Elites hisses.  “There’s another one!”

A second man is climbing out of the passenger’s side door of the car.  Also painted, also apparently unconcerned with the guns aimed at them.  Another man climbs out behind him, and then, startlingly, a fourth.  A fifth.  A _sixth_.

Eight people in face-paint have climbed out of the tiny car by the time Harrison shakes off his fascinated disgust and fires the first warning shot.  The concrete by the boy’s feet splinters--he back-pedals, stumbling ludicrously, balances for a second on one foot, and then turns his fall into a startlingly graceful backflip and lands on his feet, still smiling that stupid, dopey smile.  

“Not chill,” he says.  “Bro, you oughta look behind you.”

Harrison catches himself before he can glance back--he’s proud to see that the rest of his troops keep their eyes on the Motorcitizens as well.  

“You really think we’re dumb enough to fall for your tricks?”

There are still people climbing out of the two tiny cars.  There are twelve men and women in paint and ludicrous bright colors now.  One of them has three brightly-colored balls in her hands, tossing them lazily into the air one after the other so they cross paths in mesmerizing arcs and figure eights.  Harrison tries not to stare.

“Get on the ground,” he repeats, and primes his weapon, more for the menacing sound than because he needs to.  “Or we’ll terminate every single one of you.  Mister Kane doesn’t need crazy freaks like you anyway.”

“Hey,” says the boy, apparently oblivious to the gun still pointed at his face.  There’s a restrained tremor to his voice, like he’s trying not to laugh.  “--hey.  Bro, y’know, what’s blue and yellow and wearin’ overalls?”

“What’s-- _what_?”  The other painted gangsters are laughing now too, hiding muffled snorts and giggles with an effort.  Harrison grits his teeth, giving up, and half-glances back at his squad.  “That’s enough.  Men, fire on my command.”

“Gotta hint for you,” says the boy, and when he tilts his head down to look Harrison in the eyes his paint catches the neon shadows and becomes something much...sharper.  Skull-like.  “You really shoulda looked when I said.”

The Mama’s Boys have half of Harrison’s squad on the ground by the time he hears the yelling and turns.  The clowns get the rest.

\--

The last time Abraham Kane stood in front of this array of screens, watching his plans unfold through the eye cameras of a thousand bots, it didn’t end well.  Even with the attention of his best doctors, his leg still aches; he still remembers the feeling of the pod falling.  The fire.  It was too much like a car crash, and he will never forgive Chilton for that.

He’s so consumed by that thought, by the flood of rage and nausea that accompanies it, that he almost misses the first camera feed going dark.  The flicker at the corner of his eye catches his attention, and he flicks a finger across his control pad, rewinding the feed, glaring through the bot’s optic systems at the landscape of rooftops and empty windows.

And then there’s a blur--a hand, maybe, holding something, and with a few quick movements covers the bot’s camera with some kind of...masking agent.

“...Hirsch.”

His communication officer’s line crackles into life.  “ _Sir?_ ”

“We’re losing optic feed,” Kane says, eyes fixed on his screens--he hears the faint trace of a nervous gulp.  

“ _We’re working on it, sir!  They--they seem to have found some way to cover the lens itse--_ ”

“I didn’t ask,” Kane rumbles forbiddingly--Hirsch immediately shuts up and nods instead, eyes wide.  “...If they think this will save them, they’re _wrong._  Send in another wave.”

\--

“Yo,” says Fel30km, shaking his last can, “you think this is really gonna make a difference?”

“Bots can’t shoot us if they’re blind, bro,” says Sandra, who didn’t want a badass graffiti name for some reason.  “Or anyone else.”

“Yeah, but--”

“Eyes on!”

Fel30km follows his sister’s lead, ducking behind a rooftop air conditioning unit and peering overtop of it at the squad of bots coming their way.  “...Shit, that’s a lot.”

“Better make it count, then,” murmurs Sandra, eyeing the can in his hand.  “All of ‘em except the one with the green eye, right?”

“Green,” her brother repeats, and jitters from foot to foot.  “--yeah.  Yeah, sounds right.”

“Get as many as you can,” Sandra says, and claps him on the back. “If we don’t get ‘em all King Krylon’s squad is waiting uptown.  C’mon, let’s go make some art.”

\--

A little boy is crying.

He’s one of the six civilians Commander Abram’s squad has come across today, now safely stored in the capture pod.  They expected more, obviously, but it was a relief just to have _some_ good news for Mister Kane.  The messages coming in from other squads across the city have not been...encouraging.

“Shut him up!” one of the Ultra-Elites barks, glaring at the boy’s parents.  One of the women throws him a rude hand gesture, but the other one starts murmuring soothingly to the kid, stroking his hair.

“That’s more like it.”

“Easy, Evans,” mutters Abram, trying not to let his dislike for the man color his tone.  “They’re harmless, save your energy for--”

“Oh my god, sir!”

Abram rolls his eyes, turning instead to look at...oh, of course it’s Anders.  That kid is going to give him an ulcer one day.  “What is it now?” he says, trying to stay patient as Anders raises one trembling finger to point down a sidestreet to their right.

“It’s--it’s--!”

It’s Mike Chilton--minus the nightmarish grin and pointed teeth, but definitely Mike Chilton, Public Enemy Number 1, grinning and bouncing on his toes like there’s nothing about a fully-armed battalion of Ultra-Elites that should even worry him.

“Chilton!”  the Commander raises his gun, but Chilton doesn’t even seem to notice.  He slips back into the shadows, eyes shadowed, still smiling, and vanishes from sight in the gloom of the alley.  “Get back here--Squad, split up and flank him!  He can’t run from all of us.  Cohen, contact Mr. Kane, tell him we found Objective One.”

“Sir, the comms are down!”  Cohen hisses between his teeth, fingers fazing through his screens as he tries to boost their signal and run at the same time.  Chilton’s retreating shape jinks and weaves, always ten steps ahead, and then the air is full of yells and curses as rubble looms up out of the darkness.  

Training on brightly-lit Deluxian obstacle courses prepared them for chasing criminals through the orderly roads in Deluxe, but the roads here are cracked and worn; gaping pits open under their feet as they trail after Chilton’s distant shadow.  Abram manages to keep his footing, but to his left and right he glimpses squad members trip and fall--not a problem, they can be retrieved later.  Everything else pales in comparison to the prospect of catching Mike Chilton.

And it looks like it just might happen.  Chilton may know the streets, but he’s not as fast as he looks in their security briefings and whatever he’s carrying to light his way gives his figure a faint, distant glow, easy to follow in the darkness.  Every so often he’ll almost lose his footing, gripping his leg like he’s in pain.  He’s compromised, and Kane Co. is catching up.

And then, finally, Chilton stumbles.  He recovers it, pushes himself back up and then ducks to one side and tries to open the door of a building--losing precious seconds when it fails to open.  He tugs one last time, and then turns back to look at the squad as they come pounding up to surround him.  

At this distance that weird, luminescent halo is even more pronounced, and he stands strangely too still, like he’s…

Chilton blurs, glitches, and flickers out of existence, leaving nothing behind but a cracked hologram projector taped roughly on the back of some...miniaturized vehicle.  

“Sir?”  says one of the Ultra-Elites, and Commander Abram can hear the dawning realization in the man’s voice.  “This doesn’t feel right--”

“On the ground, dirtbags!”

Flashlights flare in the darkness like pale, glaring eyes, and even as the solder to Abram’s left raises his gun, a dark shape rushes out of the darkness and twists the weapon expertly out of his hands.  Something hard and heavy slams into Abram’s left knee, and as he stumbles, yelling as hands close on his neck and shoulder.

Whoever grabbed him twists his arms up behind his back before he has a chance to fight, and old-fashioned metal handcuffs click and clatter as they snap shut on his wrists.  “I’m placing you under citizen’s arrest by authority of the DPD Veterans Society,” says a voice, and Commander Abram blinks as a battered, rusty badge is dangled in front of his face.   _Detroit Police Department_.   “You have the right to remain silent.  Asshole.”

\--

“What do you mean, you’ve lost contact?!”

The man cringes a little bit, but Kane can’t reach him through the screen--unfortunately--and he stands back to attention a second later, soldiering on.   _“I mean we’ve...lost contact, sir!  The comms are going in and out, some of them aren’t answering at all.  We’re running blind, Mister Kane.  Some of them are reporting seeing Chilton, but--but we’ve heard that from multiple squads, from completely different sectors!”_

Kane glances up-through the red-tinted glass of his war-pod’s central window, Motorcity is a dark expanse of jagged buildings and mouldy pipes.  An eerie uplit glow of neon shines up the sides of buildings here and there.  Occasionally, the red flash of a laser being fired or a green plasma blast flashes, glinting off distant, half-broken windows.

“Send more troops,” he growls.

_“...I’m sorry, sir?”_

_“You heard me!_ I didn’t bring every man and bot I have down here to get beaten by a _holo-show_!  We’ll beat them with numbers!”

\--

A-Squad gets the message that the Public Enemy Number 1 they’ve been following is most likely a hologram just as it disappears.  Commander Chopra and his men are left looking aimless and sheepish in the dark, until a moment later when a small woman with dark curly hair and a prominent nose shuffles out of a sidestreet.  One of the Ultra-Elites immediately pushes past Chopra to point his gun at her, barking, “Don’t move!”

“Uh...hi.”  The woman grins, very nervous but not nearly as nervous as she should be.  “I’m Beans.”

“Into the containment pod!” shouts the Ultra-Elite, clearly eager to capture at least _one_ motorcitizen today.  “Come on, hands up!”

“I’m Beans,” Beans repeats, with the dogged determination of somebody who’s been mentally practicing this speech for a while, “I used to live up there.” She gestures to the Deluxe ceiling, “--Twenty whole years!  And you know what, I never did find anything I liked doing.  But since I came to Motorcity--”

“We don’t have time for this!” barks the guy, one arm shooting out to grab her roughly by the shoulder.

“Fair-- _oof_ \--fair enough,” says Beans, stumbling as he tries to manhandle her towards the pod.  “Sic ‘em, kids! _”_

All around the squad, eyes light up the darkness.  There’s an eerie chorus of screaming chirps.

“What the--” one of the cadets starts, and then whimpers as a tide of mangy gray bodies rushes in en masse.

Beans takes a laser bolt to the shoulder before the squad is fully incapacitated, but it doesn’t take long--Kane Co.  doesn’t have response protocols in place for trained mutant rats.  More citizens come rushing out of the shadows as they troops go down, gingerly working around the rats, tying the hands of the thrashing Kane Co. troops with clothesline, electrical cords, anything that can tie in a knot.

“Settlement?”  one of the women with coils of old, frayed rope hanging on her shoulder pulls up a comm link.  “...Uh...this is the group down in eastern market?  We got some elites, uh...they’re down.”

 _“Rat squad!”_  the Cabler on the other side of the link laughs.   _“We’ll add it on the map.  You got anybody who can shove ‘em in the pod?_

\--

It’s strange, not being on the frontlines.  Julie is pacing back and forth in front of the comm screens, answering calls from all across the city, tallying wins and losses with cool precision.  Texas is on the comm with his family, which seems to be a small army all on its own.  Harley is folded uncomfortably into a corner, sometimes sitting forward to listen to discussions of strategy, but never speaking.  Tennie is bent over a table full of papers and schematics with a couple of Cabler engineers, scribbling out plans, discarding them one after another while Dutch calls Dar to check on him for the hundredth time in ten minutes.  

“Still not picking up?”  Tennie glances up as Dutch groans and slams a fist into a nearby power conduit.  “You know he can’t answer you if it might get him caught.”

“I know!”  Dutch drags his hands down his face.  “But he also can’t answer if he’s already caught!  Or…”  he grits his teeth on the words and takes a deep breath.  “I’m gonna call again.”

 _“Dutch--dude, I know you’re freaking out,”_ Chuck starts, his voice staticky and distant from the other side of a comm screen.

“I’m not freaking out,” says Dutch immediately, eyes fixed on the loading symbol on his screen.  “Come on…”

“-- _but we really need you working on this right now_!”  Chuck persists.  “ _Come on, you think I’m not worried about Mike?_ ”

“Mike is Mike _,_ ” says Dutch.  “Dar is my baby brother.”

“Okay, man, but--we need you here, okay?”

Dutch sighs through his nose, closing the screen again.  “...Yeah, sure.  Gotcha.  What’s goin’ on now?”

_“Well--”_

“Kane’s here!”

The instant the call rings out, there’s a sharp shift in focus in the room.  Video feeds from one of the gates go up on the wall, showing the hulking silhouette of an Ultra-Golem with Kane’s war pod hovering at its head.  Harley stands up in his corner, staring at the image with eyes wide and fists clenched.

“Good catch, Eyes,” says Bracket evenly, looking back at the girl who announced Kane’s presence.

“There’s more,” says Eyes anxiously, her ocular implants lighting up blue as she blinks through video feeds.  “I mean there’s--lots more.  More bots, more men--”  Her voice jumps a couple notes higher as she adds abruptly, “--And they’re coming down into the settlement!  I--I repeat, we have hostiles in the cables, coming through the dome!”

“We don’t have people up there,” Bracket rumbles, and then whips around as, far overhead, somebody screams.  “We don’t have people up there!”  He pulls out his keys and starts running, heading toward the battered fleet of trucks and cargo-haulers hidden under the base of the settlement.  “Tennie!”

“On it!  Hey, Chuck!!”  Tennie pulls Chuck’s comm screen over to her and starts talking the moment his pale, uplit face comes into view.  “--Yeah, you!  You’re elbow-deep in our comm systems--hook me up to the settlement broadcast system!”

Chuck warbles some kind of high-pitched assent and starts typing furiously.   _“Connecting--you’re on!”_

Tennie pulls up her screen, taps on the blank contact icon and a second later her voice is booming out across the Settlement, echoing up to the distant Deluxe ceiling.  “ _ATTENTION, THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ANNOUNCEMENT--CANNONEERS TO BATTLE STATIONS! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”_

Immediately, the sound of shouts and echoing footsteps filter down from the distant heights of the settlement.  The call echoes out into the dark, calling for evacuation, defense systems, fortification.  The Cabler’s protection network shimmers online, a vast net of glowing plasma linkages overhead, and there are distant crashes and booms; the bots streaming in through the opening at the apex of the cable spire short and tumble out of the air.

“There are hostiles incoming,” says Harley, and he has the same hard, ready tone to his voice Mike sometimes gets, up against overwhelming odds.  “Too many to pick off, and they know we’re here.  They’re headed straight for us.”  He sucks in a breath through his teeth sharply and reaches out to the screen, enhancing the image as far as he can.  “...And he’s not just bringing one Ultra-Golem this time, I see--four...no, at least six--”

“The network won’t take those out,” says Tennie, and for a second her voice wavers.  Dutch glances up from where he’s bent over the diagnostics for the protection network, reaches up and touches one gloved hand.  Tennie jumps, and then glances down and sees him watching her.  She squeezes his fingers and then straightens her shoulders and lets go.  “We need more firepower.”

“Hey!”  one of the Cablers who’s been manning the comms waves a hand urgently.  “Tennie!  Uh...Burners!  We got a problem!”

“ _He_ shot _me_!” Junior caterwauls, on the other side of the screen.  “ _I’m gonna rip that gun outta that loser’s hand and put it--_ ”

“The Hatchet Men got surrounded.”  The Cabler jerks his head toward the map of Motorcity, hovering overhead.  The bloody red stain of Kane’s army is spreading across the city, heading slowly but inexorably for the Settlement.  “The Mama’s Boys are down a couple guys, and they can’t get to their cars--”

“Tell them to fall back,” Harley snaps.  “They can’t hold that ground.”  And then, as everybody turns to look at him, “--well--do you have a better idea?!”

“Better than letting Kane’s guys get anywhere near our home?” growls Tennie, looking more furious than ever.  To Harley’s credit, he barely wavers when he takes the full brunt of her glare.

“Th--they’re almost here anyway!  Better to consolidate the forces we have left and bottleneck them in the Settlement’s passages than try to fight them on the ground!”

They stand there for another long moment, eyes locked, hands clenched, and then Tennie whips abruptly around and starts up the announcement system again.

\--

This isn’t the Skylarks’ first firefight, but it is their first one with Deluxe forces.  Even the Duke’s army doesn’t measure up to Kane’s, and that’s saying something.  They may be easy to see, and they may be dressed in stupidly bright colors, but they just don’t _stop_.  Rayon thinks every single Buick on the streets right now must have at least one broken window.  Well, he thinks cynically, they match the houses on the street now, anyway.  It’s not the Skylarks’ handiwork, but some gang really did a number on this neighborhood.

When Tennie’s voice rings out from high above, though, even the Deluxians stop firing for a second to listen.

“Wish she’d stop acting like everyone’s boss already,” mutters Shawl, pushing back his mop of spiky ginger hair.  “And what does she mean, _retreat?_ ”

“Doesn’t seem like too bad an idea,” says Rayon coolly, sending a shot flying at a flash of blue and white across the street.  “If they follow us onto open ground, they can’t keep hiding in alleys like the rats they are.”

“Always wanted to mow down some Ultra-Elites,” says Peak cheerfully.  “Boss, you head out first, we’ll cover for--”

“I’m not going anywhere, 2,” says Rayon, and fires again, aiming at kneecap-level.  From the distant yell of pain, he hits something nonfatal.  Kneecapping....the Duke would never let him hear the end of it. Maybe he really is getting soft in his old age. “What’s the number on my jacket?”

“One, boss,” says Peak.

“Why’s that?”

“...’Cause you’re the best shot we got, boss,” Notch volunteers, glancing back over his shoulder from where he’s kneeling behind Peak’s car.

“That’s right,” says Rayon.  “So you get in your rides _I’ll_ cover--”

He sees the concussion grenade coming, but this time he’s not fast enough; it flies through a smashed driver’s-side window and Notch--

 _Shit_ , Notch is still firing, leaning against the hood of a car that’s about to blow any second, that familiar super-focused look on his face.

 _“Notch!”_ screams Peak, running for him, but in the instant that Notch turns, a questioning look on his face, there’s a _whumpf_ and a ball of fire smashes a car door into him, sends him flying into a pile of rubble.  Rayon swears loudly, sees the Deluxians approaching and fires-- _one, two, three, four, five--_ they’re down, not dead (for now, but Rayon will find them later).

Shawl is pulling Peak away, back to the car with 3 painted on its hood, shouting--“Come on!  Come on bro we gotta go!”--and Notch is breathing when Rayon hoists the door off of his body.

“Hey,” he says, sharp and commanding.  “We need to head out.  Can you move, yes or no.”

“Hurt my back,” says Notch weakly.   _Shit_.  No point asking too many more questions, he’ll die anyway if he gets left here--Rayon can already hear more Kane Co. troops coming.  He gets his arms under Notch’s shoulders and head, feeling around quickly for a lump under the guy’s dreads.  Nothing--that’s good.

His back is a different story.

“Boss...” says Notch woozily, and winces as the bent metal and shattered stone he slammed into falls away from him, splattered red. “think I ruined my suit, sorry.”

The number 4 is almost obliterated by a growing stain of red.  He’s right, Rayon knows.  This suit is ruined.  

“You’re paying for your new one,” he says, and pulls Notch’s arm over his shoulders.  “Now come on, we gotta get out of here.”

“Yes boss,” mumbles Notch.  He’s unconscious by the time Rayon gets him sprawled in the back seat of his Buick, bleeding on the seat, and the hot, sick anger rising in Rayon’s gut is only heightened by something that feels suspiciously like guilt.

\--

“Time to go,” says Tennie, and closes the screen, firing up her modified welding gun with a dangerous-sounding whirr.  “Everybody pick three people, and stick together!  Watch each other’s backs!  Go go go!”

“Tennie!”  Dutch reaches out and snags her arm, pulling her closer to murmur something.  Tennie looks shocked and then happy and then pained all in quick succession; she pulls him down again and kisses him, then grabs him for a tight hug and lets go, resettling her grip on her weapon.  

“Be careful,” she repeats.  “Betz, Ryder, Rollo, you’re with me.”

“Hey, you!”  Texas socks Harley on the arm.  “You’re gonna get punched off these weird little roads!  Stick with Big Texas, he’ll--”

“Wait!” says Harley, staring around in horror.  “Where’s Chuck?!”

Texas cocks an eyebrow at him, frowning.  “Hey, slow your roll, homeslice!  Why d’you wanna know?”

“I--because--he could be in danger!”

“Yeah, so?  Burners eat danger for breakfast, or, well, I do.  Ka-chaw!”

“He’s one of the greatest scientists of our age!” Harley retorts, his voice high-pitched with disbelief.  “I--do you know how many times I read his thesis on cyborg circuitry--and he was only _fourteen_ when he wrote it--!”

“Texas doesn’t care!  If you nerd-love him so bad why don’t you--”

Another alarm goes off, effectively cutting off the argument.  While Texas is yelling and punching the air, a Cabler motions to Harley, holding up a screen.

“Hey.  Deluxe boy.”

“It’s Alex,” mutters Harley, but without much vitriol.

“Whatever.  Chuck’s down here--see where I’m pointing?  See?  That’s the level one connection hub.”

“Of course I see where you’re--I mean.  Thank you.  Thanks.”  Harley studies the map for a second, tracing his path with one finger, and then jogs off in the direction of the nearest flight of stairs.  “We can’t leave him down there!  I’m gonna go get him!”

\--

Chilton is mocking him.

The hologram doesn’t even try to act like the real thing; it stands on the street below him, flickers and vanishes and appears on a distant rooftop, staring at the war-pod the entire time, silent and watchful.  

_“...sir?”_

“I see it,” says Kane, and watches as Chilton’s hologram flickers faintly below him.  “He’s leading us straight to him.”

“ _Sir_ ,” says his commander, with only a touch of a falter to his salute.  Even through the comm, the faint quaver to his voice is audible.  “ _It--Chilton could have--_ ”

“If he thinks he can trap me,” Kane growls, and clenches his hands behind his back, squeezing so hard his nails bite into his palms.  “He’s got another thing coming.  My war-pod will follow the hologram, your unit will join the invasion, that is an _order_!”

“ _Yessir_ ,” says his commander hastily.  “ _Sorry sir_.”

Chilton’s hologram watches him come, standing still and silent on the rooftop.  Kane looks down at him and sees that insolent, fearless stare for a split second before the hologram jitters and reappears in the distance, glowing like a distant fire on another rooftop.  

“No hostages this time, Chilton.”  He flicks a hand over the screens; his army flanks him, washing the buildings of Motorcity with scarlet light.  “ _Not this time._ ”

\--

In the middle levels of the Cabler’s Settlement, medicine is happening.  The center of the cable system is the most secure place in the Settlement, and there are more wounded coming in all the time.  The Burners station themselves at the entrance to the inner vaults, holding their ground as Kane Co. troops stream up the winding roads around the Settlement.  Tennie has a bloody laser-burn on one leg, but she’s upright and moving, and nobody has the time or the breath to make her lie down and get it bandaged.

The Duke’s medical team is here in their red and gold scrubs, but they’re not the only ones who came out to help.  Doctors and nurses from all over the city, young and old, apprentices and retirees, are spread out across the room, stitching wounds, shining lights in eyes, bandaging and medicating.  In one corner, a cluster of Skylarks are gathered around their number four man, watching nervously as the doctor stitches a deep gash across his lower back.

“We can’t keep this up,” Dutch grits out, and ducks out from behind his cover to take a couple of fast potshots at the Ultra-Elites clustered on the roads outside.  “I get that it’s a ways from here to most of the gang bases, but they gotta be takin’ their sweet time!”

“Maybe they ran into trouble on the way here,” says Tennie, and then, “eyes on, someone’s coming up!  Hey, over here!  Hurry it up!”

Two men carrying a woman on a blood-streaked scrap metal stretcher limp through the vault doors, just before a line of Ultra-Elites rush around the corner, guns raised.  Every nerve in Dutch’s body goes sharp and bright as the man in the lead breaks into a run, and without thinking he switches his omnitool to bolas mode and flings it wildly at the guy.  It tangles around his ankles, brings him down, but a moment later his friends take his place and oh _shit_ there are a lot of them--

“Tennie!”

“I know, I know!” Tennie snaps, slamming open a box on the wall to show a tightly-packed array of circuits and wires.  “Why’d you throw your weapon away?”

Dutch flushes, edging back towards the door even as he settles into something like a fighting stance.  “I panicked!  Are you gonna--”

“And-- _got it!_ ”  Tennie hauls a switch in the box and turns back to the hall with a look of fierce satisfaction on her face.  There’s a series of sharp, ominous clunks, and then a wire grid descends from the ceiling onto the heads of the oncoming Ultra-Elites, driving them to the floor.  One of them starts to push himself to his feet, but there’s a whine and a smell of ozone and the grid lights up blue-white.

“I love electricity” says Tennie cheerfully over the sound of crackling and screams.

“Wow,” says Dutch, and then, after another moment, “...you gonna turn that thing off any time soon?”

“What?  Oh, yeah, I guess.”  Casually, Tennie reaches for the switch again and pushes it up with rather less urgency than she pulled it with.  She and Dutch stand there for a moment, watching the blue-and-white clad figures twitch and groan, and then a comm window opens by Tennie and Eyes’ voice echoes through the corridor, more urgent than ever.

 _“Hey Tennie, you know how Kane_ really _doesn’t like the way we built our houses on his stuff?”_

“Yeah,” says Tennie.

_“Well, looks like we’re still top priority, ‘cause…uh.  About a third of his people are headed our way.”_

“What about Kane?” Dutch asks urgently, ducking down behind Tennie to join the conversation.  “Is he still headed to Midtown?”

There’s a breathless pause filled with the clatters and beeps of Eyes’ keyboard, and then she says, _“Yeah, the big guy’s still on track.  Guess you guys were right about the holograms.  But Tennie, I was gonna say--Foxy called in a couple minutes ago and she’ll be here soon, just...not soon enough.  They’ll hit us first and I don’t know if we can stall ‘em long enough for--”_

“Let us worry about that,” says Tennie, hard and determined.  “Just keep it up and let us know if anything else changes, alright?  We’ll figure something out.”

“Yeah,” says Dutch as Eyes’ window closes, “like what we’re gonna do with all these electrocuted Ultra-Elites.”

“New patient?  Hey!”

Dutch turns and then jumps hastily out of the way as a squad of harried-looking doctors and nurses come hurrying over.

“You two--” the woman in the lead hurries up to the two men carrying the stretcher, pulls out a bright green paint-marker and unceremoniously swabs a streak of color onto each of their foreheads.  “Help out wherever you can, okay?  We need all hands on deck.  Anybody else still out there?”

“Not many.”  The man in front carefully lowers the scrap metal to the floor.  “It’s just--white and blue, all the way up and down.  We’re boxed in pretty good.”

“And we’re running out of space,” says another doctor, in a heavy brown coat.  They rub their hands down their face, staring down at the hallway of groaning Elites.  “God!  Okay!  Split up, look for chest-rise--”

“For them?”  Tennie grimaces.  “But they’re the enemy.”

“Tennie,” says Dutch, pained--Tennie glances at him and sighs.  

“Okay,” she says, “--but they wouldn’t hesitate to kill us.  You know that, right.”

Dutch thinks about Dar, about his innocent belief in something better.  About Mike, sitting in the corner of the hideout turning an old Kane Co. nametag over in his fingers.  “...just...try not to hurt anybody more than you have to,” he says, and squeezes her hand.  “Please?”

“You’ll have time for this later,” says one of the nurses firmly, and flaps her hands at Dutch.  “Cover us!”

“Oh!”  He lost his omnitool--Dutch stares around and then grits his teeth, dashes out into the hallway and snatches up a fallen plasma rifle, hefting the unfamiliar smooth polymer in both hands.  It feels heavier than he expected.  “Gotcha!”

The triage team spreads out, grabbing Elites, dragging them back into the room to have their hands tied and their injuries looked at.  One doctor--a man in battered jeans and a biker jacket--and a nurse in the Duke’s red and gold rush to the woman on the scrap metal stretcher.

“Respers,” says the doctor in the jacket tensely, and pulls out a light, examining the woman’s burned, broken arm and her pale face.  

“Twenty,” says the Duke’s nurse--he grabs her hands, feeling her wrists--pinches a finger.  “Perfusion’s good.”

“Hey!”  The man in jeans shakes the bleeding woman’s shoulder, hard.  “Hey!  Give me a thumbs-up, ma’am!  Thumbs-up!”

The woman blinks and muzzily raises both hands to give a thumbs-up.  The doctor grins at her and nods to the men who carried her in.  “Yellow section,” he says.  “Give a yell for Santiago.”

“We can’t just stand here and shoot at ‘em!”  Texas spins out from behind their cover and fires off a couple of shots at the glimpses of white and blue on the other end of Tennie’s guardian grid.  “We gotta take ground back!”

“We can’t take enough out all at once,” Dutch says grimly.  “He’s got too many troops, even without the bots, we go out there and we’re gonna get slaughtered.”

“I’m working on it!”  Tennie is jogging back toward the entrance with her dad behind her, carrying boxes of scraps and wires.  “We need something new, something that’ll turn the tables.  Chuck?”

“ _We don’t have the power source,_ ” Chuck mumbles on her comm--he sounds distracted.  “ _With B.E.S.S.I.E. we had a 2122 mint-condition battery and it still burned out after three shots._ ”

“Power’s not an issue,” says Bracket, grim.  He’s bleeding too--a sharp gash over one eye.  “We’re sittin’ right on top of Deluxe’s main energy line.”

_“Okay, good, right.  But Foxy’s coming too, right?”_

“She can’t do anything about the soldiers that are already in here,” says Tennie sternly.  “She’s not bringing her bombs into our home.”

“So we drive ‘em out,” Dutch counters, but Bracket shakes his head and Chuck gives a wobbly, incredulous laugh.

_“Sorry, dude, can’t see that happening!  W--we’re trapped in here with those guys for better or worse!”_

Dutch opens his mouth to answer, then shuts it again, expecting Tennie to cut in with some kind of bolstering battlecry.  When she doesn’t, he looks up at her instead, brow furrowing.  She’s staring off into space--almost literally, it seems, with all the focus and distance of the telescope on the top level of the settlement.

“Uh...Tennie?” he ventures tentatively, worried but not wanting to break her concentration.

“Change in plans,” she says distantly.  “Tell the people in communications I need to talk to Foxy.  And someone get me a way to the outside of the tower...I have some climbing to do.”

\--

Alex finds Chuck hunched over his own array of screens in the tiny, wire-filled room, his grimace of concentration and fear limned in eerie green.  He jumps and screams when Alex busts through the door, but only spares him a moment’s glance before turning back to his work.  When he speaks, there’s a by-now familiar undercurrent of belligerence in his voice.

“What are you doing here?”

“You need to get out of here,” says Alex without preamble.  “You’re going to be overrun in--you’ve got less than a minute, Kane’s men are _here_.”

Chuck snorts and throws him another split second glance, looking his dirty blue and white uniform up and down.  “I know, and they won’t shut up.”

“I’m not a--you’re being--we don’t have time for this!  There’s only one more hologram,” says Alex urgently.  “Do you really need to stay here and control it?”

“Yes!” yells Chuck, his voice wobbling.  “It’s the most important one!  It--” he pauses for a moment to hyperventilate and swear, clutching his brow with one hand, and then shakes his head and hunches back over his screens, forcing the words out.  “--It’s--the one that’s leading Kane to Mike!”

“But he has to know the other ones were fake by now!  Why would he follow it?”

“Oh, he will,” says Chuck, with horrible certainty.  “Trust me, Hurley, if there’s anything we know for sure, it’s that he’ll chase Mikey anywhere.”

“I--okay, fine, but it’s _Alex_ , and I still think this is a horrible idea.”

“Don’t care, dude!  This--this room is really well-hidden anyway, so I’ll probably be fine, okay?  Don’t answer that!”

“Yeah, well--”

It’s at this point that someone kicks the door in.

For a single instant, while Chuck wails in the background, the three Ultra-Elites stare at Alex, obviously conflicted about their next course of action.  And then Alex punches one of them in the gut, and a green energy bolt flashes out of the shadows behind the control terminal, and it all goes to hell.

“We’re out of time!”  Alex grits out, and jumps back hastily as the second Elite through the door draws his blaster.  There’s no room to fire, but the man swings it like a club, and it comes within inches of slamming Alex in the gut.  “We need to go!”

“Shut up!”  Chuck yells, cracked with fear, and whips back around to the screen as the hologram shimmers, waiting for orders.  “Just--!  Just keep them off me!”

“What?!”  Alex gapes at him for a second, and then growls and dives forward past the Elite’s swinging gun, grappling with him, teeth bared with effort.  “--We can’t--stay here!  We’re going to be overrun in--”

Chuck lets out a cracked, frenzied noise of frustration, yanking furiously on a handful of his hair.  “I’m almost done!  I’m almost there, just-- _two minutes_ , Mike!”

“Mi--”  Alex starts, incredulous, and then doubles over as the Elite he’s fighting throws off his slackened grip and hits him hard in the stomach.  Chuck glances over, sees him staggering and lets out a strangled squawk of panic as the Ultra-Elite lunges past Alex, fists swinging, and goes for Chuck.

...who raises an arm with some kind of glowing metallic framework coalescing around it, and fires a blast of plasma a split second too late to avoid getting punched so hard he staggers.  The plasma bolt misfires, exploding deafeningly and almost taking the door off its hinges, but Alex doesn’t have time to worry about that.  He forces himself upright, still wheezing, and body-slams the elite into the terminal, fighting to get him into a headlock.

The room pulses with neon green light as Chuck starts shooting again, over and over, hitting one of the Ultra-Elites square in the chest.  The man keels over with a yell, and as his other squadmate’s gaze turns to follow him, Alex kicks the third Ultra-Elite’s limp body into him.  For a fraction of a second it seems like a victory, as Alex slams the ruin of the door shut on its remaining hinge.  He leans against it, chest heaving, gaze locked with Chuck’s as both of them listen for the sound of movement outside.  Nothing.

“...Not bad,” says Chuck after a moment, and then, with a gasp, “ _Mikey!_ The hologram!  I have to--”

And then there’s a sound-swallowing, thunderous _BOOM_ and the room shakes so violently that Chuck loses his footing, falling across his keyboard with a scream.  Alex hears the crack and groan above them, knows something’s wrong an instant before his brain registers the way the ceiling is buckling overhead.  On instinct, he lunges for the only other person in the room.

“ _Sir, get down!_ ”

\--

The hologram has vanished.  Kane stares impassively out of the war-pod’s main window, trying to figure out what Chilton’s game is now.  Perhaps there’s some new threat waiting for him in the forest of thick, greenish cables to the west…it would be just like Chilton to try to lead him away from his precious sewer of a city.

 _“Sir,”_ says one of his men suddenly, _“there’s someone down there!”_

“Is it Mike Chilton?” Kane grits out, eyes sliding coldly down to the dappled depths of the cable cluster.

_“I--I don’t know, sir, it looks like there are a lot of them…”_

He sees them now--a small crowd of cloaked figures.  It’s not easy to tell from this distance, but if Kane had to guess he’d say they’re teens, twenty at the oldest.  Kane _hates_ Motorcity teenagers.

“Send a squad after them,” he says.  “Take a capture pod.  We’ll wait here for Chilton.”

_“You mean...the hologram of Chilton, sir?”_

Kane turns one shadowy, baleful eye on the comm screen, and the man on the other side swallows audibly in the sudden chilly silence.

_“I mean...yes, sir!”_

\--

In the half-wrecked connection hub, there’s a moment of muffled, keening silence as its occupants shift slowly, making sure they’re still alive.  Chuck shifts in the dark, coughs on air that tastes like dust and metal, and then comes up short as his cautious movements run up against immovable resistance.  He pulls at whatever’s trapping his leg, and immediately stops, whimpering, _“Ow ow ow ow!”_

Harley is silent for a long minute, while Chuck’s hyperventilating slowly turns into something resembling normal breathing and both of them adjust to the dark.  Eventually, Chuck’s voice breaks the silent darkness, shakily accusing.   “...Did you just call me ‘sir’?”

“No,” says Harley.  And then, before Chuck can answer, “--did you call me ‘Mike’?”

“ _No_ ,” says Chuck, very firmly, and pulls up a screen.  “Guys?  Guys, come in--I lost the hologram.  We need a plan B, _now_.”

“ _Lost it_?”  Dutch is yelling--the tinny sound of explosions echo in the background, drowning out his voice.

“Something blew.”  Chuck winces as another explosion rumbles through the ground, but the room doesn’t shift.  “The door’s gone, but--” he takes a deep, trembling breath.  “...I can feel some fresh air.  So we’re not gonna die.  Yet.  Here.”

“ _Oh.  Uh.”_ Dutch winces.   “ _Listen, sorry, the Amazons got a little carried away I guess.  It’s okay, man!  It’s cool, we’ll...we’ll figure something out.  You sure you’re okay?”_

“Sure,” Chuck says, and winces all over as the rubble where the door used to be shifts a little bit.  Outside, Kane Co. troopers are yelling.  “Yeah, I’m okay!  I’m gonna keep running comms.  Is Mike where he needs to be?”

“What?!”  Harley says, disbelieving.  “No!  We’re not ‘okay’!”

“ _He’s there, now we just need Kane to take the bait_.”  Dutch ducks, covering his head as shrapnel peppers his comm screen.  The picture fizzes and warps.  “ _I think I can handle it, just don’t die out there!  Gotta go!_ ”

“Okay, b...bye,” says Chuck awkwardly to the empty air.  All he wants to do, in the silence that follows, is lie here on his back and never move again.  But there are more and more explosions outside, farther away but still loud enough to make the ground tremble.  

“We’re not okay,” says Harley, “ _You’re_ not okay!”  And it’s irritatingly similar to Mike, the way he keeps just-- _pushing_ stuff like this.  Chuck gives him a filthy look in the dark.  “Why would you tell them we’re okay?!”

“Because we _are,_ ” says Chuck, and then he makes the mistake of trying to shift to one side and has to stop, shuddering, as his leg refuses to shift with him.  “ _Oh,_ holycrapohjeezohman, _shhhhh--_ shoot!  Ow!”

“What’s wrong?”  Harley is moving in the dark, trying to crawl closer.  “Let me see.”

Chuck tenses all over.  “Uh-- _no_?!”

“I have first aid training!”

“I don’t care!”  Chuck tries to pull away and yells in pain again, doubling over his leg.  “Agh!  No!  You just--stay over there before you make anything worse!”

“I’m not going to--look, I want to _help!_ ”

“You’ve helped _plenty_ ,” Chuck spits, and with the panic bubbling in his chest it comes out high and harsh and dripping vitriol.  “You _helped_ Mikey right into Kane’s operating room!  You helped turn him into Blue, you _helped_ almost get him killed!”

There’s a long, long silence after that.  Then Harley says, very very quietly, “ _Sorry._ ”

He sounds like it, too.  It doesn’t help.  The look on Mike’s face when he said _I wanted to follow his orders_ , the clips of his expression as he debriefed to Kane, Red beating him unconscious--none of that gets any easier to handle.

“Yeah, well,” says Chuck, and feels down his leg, wincing, toward the place the stone meets his jeans.  The denim is torn, the skin underneath is scraped and torn, but it doesn’t feel like it’s crushed.  Somewhere under the stone, he can wiggle his toes.  Even though making his foot move makes his whole lower leg feel like it’s on fire.  “...Mike seems to think that makes it okay.”

“It...doesn’t, though,” says Harley, and he sounds almost uncertain, like the whole thing is some incomprehensible puzzle he can’t figure out.  “You don’t think it does.”

“We have a job to do,” says Chuck, and gives up on the leg.  He’ll get it dug out later.  Priorities.  Mike.  He tries to sit up straight and instantly regrets it; with his injured leg extended like this it’s surprisingly painful to keep himself upright.  “Look, if you want to help, get over here.  I need something to lean on.”

“I can do more than that!”  Harley pulls up a screen, bright in the dark, lighting up his eyes piercingly blue in his ghostly pale face.  “Just--what are you doing?”  

“Whatever we can.”

“Oh,” says Harley, and gives a brief, slightly hysterical sort of laugh.  “So...not much, then.”  He edges over, very cautiously, and a second later his back is pressed up against Chuck’s, annoyingly sturdy, giving him a welcome surface to lean on. “So...but really, what are you doing?  Brief me.”

“We’re support.”  Chuck pulls up his own screen, tinting the blue-lit ruin of a room with green.  “I--dammit.  I can’t get Mike.  But the Cablers have their whole base wired up, so we can hitch our systems to their security cams and feed them whatever diagnostics we can run on the footage.  I don’t know if I can remote-access their weapons systems, but I’m gonna try.”

“Got it.”  Harley’s back shifts, and the light from his screen flickers and shifts as he expands his screens, already typing.  “I...do you have an access key I can…?”

Chuck rolls his eyes and transfers the code with bad grace.  Harley takes a deep breath, coughs a little and then gets to work.

After a while, he says, “...There are so many of them.  There’s not even a troop pattern to pick out, they’re just--”

“No crap,” says Chuck tersely, because _yeah,_ there are a lot.  There are--geez, there are so many, they’re swarming over the settlement like ants.  “Doesn’t matter.  They’ll handle it.”

“But-- _agh,_ but you can’t know that!”  Harley kicks out at some rubble.  “We’re going to get caught, and I’m going to get locked in a high-level detention cell for the rest of my life--”

“Okay, well, for one thing,” says Chuck, “You’re at least... _kind of_ R &D, so Kane doesn’t care about you enough to put you in a high-level cell.  And for another thing, that’s what we do down here.  We trust each other.  You should try it some time.”

There’s a long silence.

“...Not now,” says Chuck.  “Not me.  Gross.”

Another moment of silence, punctuated by another ominous rumble.  Then, in the dim, dusty quiet, Alex sighs.

“Mister Kane is going to shoot Mike,” he says, soft and miserable.  “And it’s my fault.”

“If you think that’s true, you’re even dumber than he is,” says Chuck, very firmly.  “Shut up.”

“Mi--Kane--is actually much more intelligent than--” Harley starts, and then stops when Chuck snorts.  “What?!”

“I wasn’t talking about Kane,” says Chuck, and lets his head thump back against the back of Harley’s skull.  It makes his head throb, but Harley goes “ow!” and that makes it worth it.  “Look, if we have to be stuck in here you might as well help.”

“Okay,” says Harley, and then again, more firmly, “--Okay.  Let’s...let’s do this then.”

They both turn back to their respective screens, and for a moment there’s a sense of what might almost be camaraderie.

“...Can I help you by getting that rock off your--”

“ _Focus._ ”

\--

The call from G-squad is both unexpected and unwelcome.  Kane spares the boy on his screen the barest of glances before turning back to the city below him, still searching for the glowing figure of the hologram.

_“Dar Gordy with G-squad.  Permission to speak, sir.”_

Kane swallows the urge to refuse.  “Go ahead, cadet.”

 _“Thank you, sir,”_ says the boy, with impressive composure.  “ _I know where Mike Chilton is_.”

Kane sneers, disbelieving.  “I’ve heard a lot of that tonight, cadet.  Get off my screen.”

Gordy swallows, but doesn’t close the connection.   _“He’s in midtown ruins, sir, straight north of you.  One of these Motorcity hoodlums ratted him out.”_ He gestures to the capture pod behind him, where a group of prisoners in dirty, brightly-colored clothes are huddled sullenly in a corner.

That gives Kane pause.  He narrows his eyes, fixing Gordy with his sharpest glare.  “Is that so.”

_“Yes, sir!”_

“Gordy, why isn’t a senior officer making this call?”

The kid hesitates, then says, slowly, _“Well, sir, uh…  I was the one who got it out of them, y’know?  Didn’t want Commander Helbram taking all the credit for it...”_

He looks even more uneasy than before as he trails off, but it’s unwarranted--Kane can feel his good humor returning, a thread of satisfaction winding through him.  Yes, this makes sense.  Chilton isolating himself, away from the oncoming destruction of his precious city, waiting to meet Kane one-on-one again.  Well, that’s one thing he and Kane can agree on.  And nervous or not, this... _Cadet Gordy_ seems to have a commendable level of healthy ambition.

“Thank you, son,” Kane rumbles, folding his arms.  “We’ll have to have a talk about your rank when this is over.”

 _“Thank you, sir!”_ says Gordy, with a crisp, nervous salute.   _“Long live Deluxe!”_

The screen vanishes.  Long live Deluxe?  Not a mantra Kane ever instituted in his security force, but he likes the sound of it.  Smiling broadly, he nods to the control officers.  “Due north, men.  I have an appointment to make.”

\--

“I think he took the bait,” says Dar, and backs into the pod.  “Thanks so much, guys.  You did great.”  

“ _So did you!_ ”  Dutch says in his ear, as the Motorcitizens push themselves up and file out of the pod.  “ _None of the Kane Co. guys you were with saw you doin’ that, right?_ ”

“They thought I got taken off for interrogation,” says Dar proudly, and then winces as a distant, staticky BOOM echoes through Dutch’s comm to his.  “Bro, are you okay over there?”

“ _Takin’ care of it!_ ”  Dutch laughs, breathless.  “ _Better now I know you’re okay.  Uh...so you guys say ‘long live_ \--’”

“Oh.”  Dar drags his hands down his face.  “No, okay?  Man, he was lookin’ at me like he didn’t buy it and I kinda panicked.  But I mean hey, he’s on his way to the spot you needed so--”

“ _You did good,_ ” Dutch says, and then hisses sharply between his teeth.  “ _Shoot--there’s another squad on the way up, I gotta go!  You gotta get back with your Kane Co. guys.  Man, why do we always gotta end up roughing you up after you help us out?  Don’t seem right.”_

“Sometimes you gotta take one for the team, bro,” Dar sighs, and bites his lip for a second before adding, “--be safe, okay?”

“ _You too_.”  Dutch’s comm clicks and goes silent.  Dar stands for a second, looking at nothing, one hand still raised to his comm, then he drops his hand and turns to the dirty, tired motorcitizens behind him and smiles half-heartedly.

“So what do we do now?”  asks a woman with a pair of stolen Deluxian laser-rifles slung on her hips.  “That was the Burners, right?”

“Sounds like things are gettin’ hot over there,” says Dar, and rubs his face absently again.  The bruises were just starting to heal.  His mom and dad are going to have a heart attack.  “Any of you ever wanted to beat up somebody in a Deluxe uniform?”

\--

Mike is already in midtown when Kane arrives.  

It’s the kind of sight that etches itself permanently into memory: he stands on the rooftop in jeans and a T-shirt, covered in cuts and bruises, leaning on a length of pipe just to stand.  He looks like the building he’s standing on, half-broken but somehow miraculously still upright, with nothing but wreckage all around.  On the wall below him, the painted Mike Chilton stands tall.  The words LIVE FREE shine just as bright as before, tinted scarlet by the lights of the advancing Ultra-Golems.

For just a second, it doesn’t look like Kane’s going to stop.  But then the red light from the war-pod’s window falls over Mike, and the deafening drone of massive repulsor engines dies to an idling hum.

The entire looming invasion force comes to a halt in the cool, still air, filling it with the hot breeze of a hundred propulsor fields holding tons of metal and polymer in the air.  Mike’s hair and T-shirt whip in the rush of warm wind, and he plants his staff firmly, hiding the slightest hint of a stagger as it buffets him.

For a long second the war pod just hovers, silent, above him.  Then Mike raises a hand, like he’s accepting a call, and a figure built out of red light shimmers into existence in front of him.  A familiar silhouette.

“ _Chilton_ ,” says Kane.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you think you know who the juggalo kid is: you are right.


	17. A Change in Management: Let Them Know Who's Boss!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The stakes are higher than ever; all of Motorcity vs. all of Kane Co., and once again...Mike Chilton vs. Abraham Kane. Change is coming for both their cities, in the form of new alliances formed, new responsibilities undertaken, and the absence of a familiar face...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Music for Mike in this chapter: Unsteady - Erich Lee Gravity Remix  
> Penultimate chapter: "13k words?? Ohohoho noooo that is too long, cut it in half!"  
> Ultimate chapter: "lol 15k words #yolo #reademandweep"

 

 

[ ](http://livelivefastfree.tumblr.com/private/image/157626026771/tumblr_olulvo203S1vp6uo4)

 

Mike throws one long, silent look up at the blank red eye of the war pod, like he’s trying to see Kane’s face through the tinted glass, and then looks back down at the hologram and inclines his head slowly.

“ _Something to say,_ commander _?_ ”

“...Yeah,” says Mike, and doesn’t even flinch at being addressed by his old rank.  “I do.  Have something.”

He sways again.  Kane’s hologram looks him up and down and then sneers.

“ _You’re barely standing,_ ” he says, and gestures out at the skyline.  The fiery glow lighting up the streets of old Detroit.  “ _You and your crime-ridden dump of a city, on your last legs and acting like you stand a chance of coming out of this alive.  What could you possibly have to say to me, here and now?_ ”

“Yeah, we...we pretty much said it all last time,” says Mike, and for a second he almost sounds like he’s about to laugh.  He closes his eyes--rests his forehead against the cold metal of his makeshift staff for a second, and then straightens back up again, taking a deep breath.  “--but I still need--to tell you.  Before you...”  He gestures tiredly up at the glaring red lights shining down on him, the arsenal in Kane’s war pod.

Kane’s hologram regards him coldly for a second.

“ _You won’t be able to stall long enough to prevent this_ ,” he says.  “ _No last-minute tricks this time, Chilton_.”

“Yeah,” says Mike.  “Yeah, ‘s okay.  I’m not stalling.”

Kane is still looking at him, with a strange, almost cautious look in his eyes.  Mike meets his gaze openly, eyes weary and shoulders tense.  “I had to say,” he says, and grits his teeth as he wavers, planting his staff and leaning on it hard until he can get his feet back under him.  “I didn’t...want it to be like this.”

Kane crosses his arms, suspicious and hostile. “... _oh?_ ”

“I didn’t want this,”  Mike repeats, and pushes himself up again, forcing his back straight, raising his voice with every word.  “I hated you, but I didn’t want to go to _war_ , Kane!  I just wanted to stop you, and to make up for the things I did for you, but you wouldn’t stop!  You just got worse!  You just hurt more and more people, I had to _do_ something.”

 _“Blah blah blah, you’re fighting for Motorcity, I_ know _, Chilton!  And look where it--”_

“And me!”  Mike’s voice cracks, cutting out halfway through the last word.  

There’s a pause--Kane must be fighting the urge to ask, but a moment later he says, slow and wary, _“...What.”_

“I trusted you,” says Mike, and every word seems wrenched out of him, half against his will.  When he glares up at Kane’s Ultra-Golem, there’s more than anger in his eyes.  “I looked up to you!  I believed we were doing something _good_ \--”

 _“I_ am _doing good,”_ snarls Kane.   _“Look around you, Chilton!  Is this place worth_ saving _?”_

Mike seems to rally, straightening defiantly where he stands.  “This place could be dead and empty, I could be the only person here and yeah, this place would still be worth saving from you.  Because you’re the bad guy in this story, even if you can’t see it!”

“ _The_ bad guy?”  An incredulous, staticky peal of laughter echoes over the rooftops.  “ _Grow up, Chilton!  This isn’t a_ bedtime story _.  No leader gets to a position of power without getting their hands dirty, but it’s small-minded, insolent children like you that stand back wringing their hands about ‘good’ and ‘evil’--_ ”

“Wh--”  Mike blinks at him, honestly stunned for a moment, then shakes his head in disbelief.  “Are you kidding me?  Just look at what you’ve done to these people!  Those aren’t just my friends on the ground down there, those are your own men!   I’m standing up for all of them _and_ for me--for everything you put me through, _everything_ you made me do!  And you can’t look me in the eyes and say a good man would act the way you do, you can’t--you can’t _lie_ to me anymore!”

 _“You didn’t have a problem believing my_ ‘lies’ _for fifteen years!”_ There’s pure hateful disdain in every word.   _“Not until you had to take responsibility, not until you were asked to sacrifice something!  You believed--”_

“Of course I believed you!” Mike yells, and it’s raw and cracked suddenly, drawing his whole body tight and contorting his bruised face with pain.  “You were like a _father_ to me!”

For a second as the words echo across the dark rooftops, Kane’s face goes slack in pure shock.  Then his expression twists into something much harder, much uglier--pain and fury and hatred.  

_“...We’re done here.”_

Mike stares him down, weary and hard-eyed and hurting, and it feels like that day--the day he tore off his badge and left it all behind.  It’s almost like no time passed at all.

“Yeah,” he says.  “I think we are.”

 _“Excuse me, uh, sir?”_ says a voice, an echo on the very edge of the audio projection from the war pod.  Kane’s hologram turns just a fraction, his eyes still fixed on Mike.

_“What.”_

\--

( _fifteen minutes ago_ )

Tennie has scaled the outside of the Settlement before, but never without a safety line, never with so much at stake, and certainly never with so many explosions happening everywhere.  Hundreds of feet below, the Amazons’ cars zip back and forth like hornets around a hive, systematically destroying the delicate, arching pathways into the Settlement.  

Tennie told Foxy to leave at least one--a side road, something the Ultra Elites wouldn’t find even if they were looking for it--but it still stings to see the rest of them collapsing in distant red-gold flares of fire.  They’d only just finished rebuilding those roads after Kane’s last attack, had barely started reassembling the homes his people dismantled.

Tennie shakes her head fiercely and glares up above her.   _Keep moving._  Somewhere up there, buried in ropy wires and protective paneling, is the emergency power switch for the entire colony.  The plan is risky; turning off every light in the Settlement means also shutting down their defense network.  And Tennie can’t say she likes the idea of her people trapped inside with a hundred angry Kane Co. troopers, either.

There’s a balcony up and to her right, with a good sturdy roof.  Tennie picks her next handhold and jumps for it, feeling cold fear knot every muscle as for just a second she falls, nothing under her but air.  And then her hand closes on the hanging cord and it (thankfully) holds.

“ _12th level,_ ” she grits out, and pulls herself up onto the roof.  She doesn’t have her hands free to pull up a comm--they’re all busy down there anyway--but it helps to say it out loud.  “Three to go.”

\--

Tennie has been gone for more than fifteen minutes and Dutch and Bracket are both very nearly beside themselves when her face pops up on the Burners’ screens.

“ _Nice view from up here,_ ” she says.  Her face is red and she sounds winded, but they can see a glowing panel behind her.  “ _Ready down there?_ ”

Dutch’s expression does something uncontrollably sappy and relieved.  Bracket presses a hand over his face and takes a deep breath.

“Young lady,” he growls, “When this is over, you’re grounded.”

“ _Not complaining,_ ”  Tennie says, and scrubs her sweaty face with one gloved hand.  “ _Geez, that was easier when I was little.  Julie, did you get all the scans you needed?”_

“I think so,” says Julie, though she’s still fiddling with the cords connecting her holo-generator to the Cablers’ systems.  “Just say the word.”

_“Great!  Chuck?”_

Chuck frowns from another screen, looking pale and dusty and almost ghostly in the dark, but very focused.  “ _Do you want just Cablers to see it?  ‘Cause it’ll take a while to set up a--_ ”

“ _I don’t care if those jerks know something is coming.  They can’t stop it either way.  Broadcast me Settlement-wide._ ”

Chuck opens his mouth, and then sighs andbends over his keyboard.  There are a few seconds of intense typing, and then he looks up again and nods.  “ _You’re on._ ”

 _“This is a Level Fifteen emergency,”_ says Tennie, loud and clear.   _“Be ready for a disconnect with Deluxe systems.  Settlement functions will be down.”_

The other Cablers in the room nod and start moving immediately, digging into caches of supplies and pulling out goggles and eyepieces.  One of them throws Dutch a pair; tinted green goggles, bristling with enhancements and patched with tape.

“We’re going dark,” she says, and pulls on her own goggles.  “Get ready.”

\--

The squatters’ colony built on the old power station is much more complex than anticipated.  The combined B, Q and S squads had intended to advance to the next level of the spire, but the road they thought would lead there turned into a convoluted series of rooms with walls made of ropy cables.  Still, they’re heading upwards...they haven’t run into any more hostiles, but there are troops coming from above and below, and the enemy has to be somewhere in between, right?  (Something has to be making those eerie rattling noises and footsteps in the darkness.  Someone has to be causing those distant, ominous booms.)

There are more than a hundred of them in this combined squad alone, and they’re all armed to the teeth, but the air is oppressively heavy with tension.  Nobody is talking.  Occasionally somebody will jump at a sound or point his gun--nobody to shoot.

“They’ve just retreated,” mutters B-squad’s commander into the horrible silence.  “They tried fightin’ back and it didn’t work, so they holed up somewhere.  Simple.”

Behind him, he hears the barest whisper of something that might be _“Yeah but what about F-squad.”_

The commander doesn’t answer.  He heard the screams, saw their comm connection flicker and short out.  He doesn’t even want to _think_ about what these barbarians are doing to them right now.

\--

“What do you mean, you have _more Elites?_ ”  Dr. Mikell drags his hands down his face.  “How are we supposed to treat a whole army of enemy soldiers--by _flashlight_ \--y’know what, never mind.  Put them with the others.  Dammit!”

“There’s gonna be more,” warns the Cabler who dragged the newest squad of captured troopers in.  “Ratchet’s kid has traps set up all over this place.”

“I’m a _doctor,_ not a prison warden,” Mikell mutters, but turns to his gathered squad of helpers.  “...split up, let’s see what we got here.”

“.. _.nh…_ ”  the Commander of the squad is moving--he looks very dizzy, and whatever drugs Tennie loaded her booby trap with are making him slur badly, but he still tries to get up.  “...What’re--gonna do to us?”

“Lie down, dumbass,” sighs Dr. Mikell, and tugs his stethoscope off his shoulders.  “We’re gonna take care of you.  Christ.”

\--

A screen lights up ahead of the Kane Co. troops, so sudden and bright that a few of the jumpier men raise their guns, yelling.  A girl stares out of it--no older than sixteen, with huge, dark eyes and goggles on her forehead.  When she speaks her voice is loud and clear.  “ _This is a Level Fifteen emergency.  Be ready for a disconnect with Deluxe systems.  Settlement functions will be down.  All Cablers be advised, we are disconnecting.”_

She flickers out again.  There are a few tense seconds of absolute silence, and then an Elite starts “...what the _f--_ ”

The lights go out. Somebody fires off a shot, briefly illuminating hundreds of startled Ultra-Elites shoving and shouting.  

“It’s a trick!” one of the Commanders yells, and a data-screen lights up the dark.  “It’s just a trick, pull yourselves together!  Find a partner, double up and be on your guard!”

Slowly, the chaos turns into order.  Elites circle warily, screens raised high, lighting the room up with ghostly Deluxe-blue light.

\--

Chuck watches them through one of a hundred security cameras, barely breathing in the darkness under the settlement.  

“...okay,” Harley murmurs, just as quiet, like the Elites might hear him if he raises his voice.  “That’s pretty good.  But there are still too many of them.  The dark isn’t going to triple our offensive capabilities.”

“ _Talk like a normal person, Cadet KaneCo,_ ” Chuck mutters, and presses a few keys.  “They’ve all got their screens open, if we hack those and play Mike’s speech for them--”

“I have...a better idea.”  Harley flinches as he says the words and Chuck glances back at him, frowning, but he soldiers on.  “That speech was, uh...good.  For you guys, down here.  To make you want to be better people, I guess.  But we don’t need something to inspire them, we need something to break their spirits.”

There’s a moment of silence, then Chuck says “...okay, sure, but good guys don’t say stuff like ‘break their spirits’.”

“Well, what can I say,” says Harley, and there’s a strange, cold note of satisfaction to his voice as he opens his files, scrolling down the list, selecting titles.   _Proposal.  Thesis. Chilton1.  Chilton2._  “I’m still learning.”

\--

When the screens flicker and change this time, it’s not just the power station’s screens--every Elite in the squad sees a face, pale and thin, with bright blue eyes.  The backdrop is Deluxian; the boy in the video is wearing a Cadet uniform.

“Hey, I know that guy,” says one of the Elites.  “That’s David’s son.”

“On your guard,” the commander hisses, and aims his gun at his own screen warily.  “This could be a trap.”

 _“The device will allow a direct connection between the orders of a programmed_ ‘master’ _, assumed after this point to be Mister Kane, and a subordinate mind,_ ” says David’s son--Harley, that was the name.  “ _The materials available weren’t sufficient when the concept was first introduced, but I believe if this prototype is successful-_ -”

And then, with spine-electrifying suddenness, the video changes.  Mike Chilton stares back out of the screen, dressed in Deluxian colors, face bruised. “ _I belong in Deluxe,_ ” he says.  His eyes are eerily distant, empty, but a flicker of pain crosses his face before the video returns to Harley, smiling confidently against the peaceful white and blue backdrop. “-- _the implant could be implemented to whatever extent Mister Kane wants,”_ Harley continues.  “ _Mass production would be simple.  Completely coordinated troop movement--_ ”

Chilton staggers back, arms hanging at his sides, as a man in black and red armor pounds into him with both fists, raining blows on him.  In the background, Mister Kane snaps “ _stand up, Commander Chilton!_ ”  and Chilton straightens up just in time for another fist to snap his head back--

“... _would be the new Kane Co. standard.  Every commanding officer could be outfitted within a six-month period…_ ”

“Sir?”  one of the Elites murmurs.  The commander is staring at his screen.  Another flicker.  Chilton clutching his head, babbling something fragmented and choked with pain.  “What--sir, what are our orders?”

“-- _ground troops within two years.  With a regimented acclimatization period, the inclination to follow the command unit’s--Mister Kane’s--orders could be widespread to the entire security force!”_

“Retreat,” says the commander, and turns to look back at his troops just in time to see a woman come out of the darkness, face warped grotesquely in the dark by a pair of many-lensed goggles, wrench raised.

“ _It hurts,_ ” says Chilton, and his hands spasm again, there’s a glint of metal on the back of his neck as he glances off-screen.  “ _Sir, it hurts._ ”  

One by one, the screens in the dark flicker out.

\--

“...You’re freakin’ evil,” says Chuck, but he doesn’t exactly sound disapproving.  The videos of Mike still make him flinch, but he doesn’t let that stop him as he scrolls through videos, throwing the worst clips onto Harley’s screen for him to cut into the middle of his R&D proposal video.  “You were gonna put these on _everybody_?  What the f--” he catches himself, looking down at Mike’s bloody face on his screen.  “--heck?”

“I wasn’t lying about coordinated troop movement,” says Harley tensely.  Watching his old proposal video seems to have put him in a bad mood.  “It would have been good if it was--if he’d used it how it was meant to be used.  Okay?”

Chuck snorts, but doesn’t argue.  On the screen, Harley smiles and says “... _I believe this could revolutionize the future of the military_ ,” and Alex grits his teeth and slams a hand onto the screen so hard the image fizzes and glitches, cutting the feed sharply to a recording of Mike’s bruised body in his hospital bed, neck bandaged and face smeared with old blood.  

“It would have been good,” he repeats.  “It would have been _great._ ”

Outside, the sounds of Cablers subduing Kane’s troops echo through the hallways.

\--

The members of T-squad are legitimately starting to panic.  Five minutes ago Lee said, “Hey, I can’t get in touch with any of the other squads...what if we’re the last ones out here?” and even though everyone else shouted him down, the words are still hanging in the air.  At this point, if a hologram of Mike Chilton appeared, they would probably all just run the hell away from it without discussion.

So when a call from another Kane Co. comm opens up, there’s an almost audible sigh of relief from the squad, and Commander Tyler says, a little too loudly, “Hello, this is T-squad, please report!”

 _“Calling to request reinforcements at these coordinates!”_ says the Ultra-Elite on the other end, throwing off a vigorous salute.  A sequence of numbers pops up on the screen, which automatically extrudes a map search function.  It’s not far from T-squad’s location--more good news.

“Can do, sir!” says Tyler, saluting back.  “But, uh--we’ve seen calls for reinforcements in that area before.”

“Like five in the past half hour,” adds Lee, and then, as a chorus of shushing erupts behind him, “What?  What did I say?”

 _“Locals are proving hard to subdue and conquer!”_ barks the Ultra-Elite, saluting again.  Tyler salutes back on reflex.   _“Request reinforcements to--”_

He pauses, masked face turning slightly as someone off-screen mutters something, too quiet to be distinguished.   _“--Request reinforcements to come save our butts, hut hut!  Long live Deluxe!”_

Then he salutes again and the screen vanishes, leaving T-squad with the map and coordinates.  There’s a long, thoughtful pause, and then Lee says, “That was weird, right?  Does anyone else think that was weird?”

“Shut up, cadet!” snaps Tyler, turning in the direction of the call’s source.  “We got a call to action, and we’re going to follow it!  Look, they must be somewhere in those big cables over there--perfect place for the enemy to hide!”  What he doesn’t say, as he marches stubbornly towards the edge of the city, is that he would rather do anything than go deeper into Motorcity itself--or, god forbid, in the direction of those distant explosions.

Yes, he thinks, as another echoing boom reaches his ears, this is a much better option.  Let the Ultra-Golems take care of the worst of it.

\--

ROTH is back.  He must have finished his job, because some graffiti artist took it upon themselves to re-spray his dented covering with neon green.  Dutch appreciates the gesture, but it’s not his favorite paint job...he’ll fix it up later.  Until then, there’s still one more thing the little bot can do.

“Okay, buddy,” Dutch mutters, “the big guys are still out there...what d’you think?”

ROTH squeals bravely and bounces in the air, synthetic arms flexing, and in spite of himself, Dutch grins.

“Oh yeah?  Haha--okay, okay, I know!  Let’s get you ready to go.”

“Go do what?” calls Julie from her workstation, peering over her screens.

“Well…we’re doin’ okay here, but I’ve been keepin’ an eye on the Ultra-Golems out there and I figure if they get any closer, we’re toast,” says Dutch, pulling a can of paint and a stencil out of his bag.  “And our weapons systems are still down here, so what else can knock out an Ultra-Golem?”

“I don’t know, what?” says Julie, exasperation coloring her voice.

Dutch grins.  “Another Ultra-Golem.”

“...Uh, am I missing something?  ROTH isn’t an Ultra-Golem.”

“No, I mean--if he can get ‘em to fire on each other, then we got five less Ultra-Golems to worry about,” Dutch elaborates.  “They have an auto-target, auto-fire system, right?”

Julie nods brusquely, eyes fixed on her screens.  “Yeah, most of the new bots have basic facial identification programs...if they saw, say, Mike’s face-- _oh_.”

“Right,” says Dutch happily, pressing the stencil to ROTH’s side and shaking the can.  “Except we’re outta holo-projectors, used ‘em all up on those traps earlier, so I was thinkin’--what if they’d auto-target other stuff?”

“Like...what?” asks Julie, watching as he lays down an even coat of black paint over the sheet.  “And--do you just bring paint with you everywhere?”

“You know it,” mutters Dutch.  “Grabbed my stuff outta Whiptail when I heard we were gonna need paint for the bots.”

“Okay, well...cool, but I don’t know what you could paint on ROTH that the Ultra-Golems would--”

And then Dutch rips away the stencil and spins ROTH around, the Burner logo standing out sharp and black on his side, and understanding dawns on Julie’s face.

“That’ll do it,” she says.

\--

The screens and the terrifying videos are gone, but the holograms are back--like the false Chiltons reported across the city, but it’s not Chilton this time.  It’s motorcitizens, squatters with the blue star emblazoned on their clothes, Kane Co. officers--moving dreamlike through the shadows of the narrow hallways.  A cadet fires on one with a yell as it blurs into existence not a foot from him, but the bolt passes right through it and there’s a yell of pain from the end of the hallway.

And then someone shouts, _“Open fire!”_ and chaos rules.

\--

“They’re really shooting each other,” says Julie numbly.  “The holograms were just supposed to be a distraction…”

“Oh, they’re so much better than that!” Eyes crows from her corner.  “This could halve their forces!  You’re a genius!”

“It…it was kinda Dutch’s idea.”  Julie turns back to her screens, dragging different hologram templates to corridors occupied by Kane Co. troops.  She doesn’t feel like a genius.

She doesn’t know what she feels like.

And then Eyes gasps and pulls up another video feed, and Julie forgets all about the holograms and the soldiers firing on each other down below.

 _“I didn’t want this,”_ says Mike.

\--

 _“We’re retreating, sir._ ”

“What?!”  Kane stares for a second, alarmed and furious, then grabs the screen and jerks it closer, teeth bared.  “This is insubordination!”

“ _We’re losing people, sir, the entire battalion at the power plant has gone dark--five of the Ultra-Golems are down, we don’t even know how, we can’t keep this up, sir, they’re picking us off, I’m sorry--_ ”

 _“No!”_ Kane snarls, whipping back around to look at Mike.   _“_ Not again!  Chilton!! _”_

Mike half-smiles and then, with a massive effort, throws off one last slow, exaggerated salute.  “Present, sir.”

Kane’s whole body seems to swell with rage.   _“Fire!”_ he barks, one eye twitching.   _“Open fire!”_

His hologram flickers out, leaving Mike alone in the red light on an empty rooftop as the bots flanking Kane’s war pod rise menacingly and the air fills with the whine of charging lasers.

Well, okay.

“I told you they’d keep fighting without me,” he says--it comes out too quiet, too hoarse to be audible from Kane’s war pod, but it makes him smile anyway.  They’ll be okay.  Mike closes his eyes.

A hand grabs him by the skull and slams his face into the roof.

Mike blacks out for a second on impact--loses a heartbeat or two, misses something--there’s no burning, electric agony from a laser impact, even though the air smells like burned ozone and he can hear the noise of the war pod’s weaponry recharging in a hurry.  Somebody is yelling--

“ _KANE!!”_

Mike gets himself up in a clumsy scramble, every nerve lighting up at the sound of that voice, but for once Red isn’t interested in him.  He sprints across the crumbled rooftop, trailing red lightning behind him, and throws himself into the open air, a stark, jet-black figure against the bloody light from the war pod.  

He crashes into the window, hanging on by his fingertips.  He draws back a gauntleted arm with two wicked, scrap-metal blades attached to it, outlined in lightning.  The window shatters when he hits it with a noise like a crack of thunder, showering glass onto the distant street.  And when he pulls his fist back it’s wrapped around Abraham Kane’s collar.

For a moment they’re still, frozen.  Red’s new blades have already drawn blood--two thin, trickling gashes across Kane’s throat and face--and the look of combined shock and fury on Kane’s face is a sight to behold.

And then they fall, twisting in the air, silhouetted briefly against the bright colors of the larger-than-life Mike Chilton.  Mike stares at the shattered window, mouth hanging open, but there’s no time to stop and watch the fight continue on the ground, because in the next moment the bots that were trailing behind Kane’s war pod are closing in, and there’s an escalating whine from a dozen weapons systems.  Mike watches the laser blasters power up, and...can’t honestly bring himself to be surprised. He backs up anyway, looking for sturdy ground, but he only gets a few steps before his feet find the edge of the gaping hole in the roof.  

Mike looks back, down into the depths of the half-destroyed building--he could easily have made the jump uninjured, could have dropped down to that next floor and run and kept _fighting_ \--and says, quietly, “Dang.”

And then there’s an almighty BOOM, the terrifying whistle of something enormous flying overhead, and a limousine shears away the last of the glass in the war pod’s eye, vanishing into the dim red glow beyond it.  The whole machine rocks back, lists in the air, and then its weapons retarget and Kane’s other bots scatter.  Rockets and bursts of laser-fire start systematically picking drones out of the air.  There’s an awful squeal of static as somebody overrides the speaker system; a classic rock guitar solo roars to life and booms out over the city at deafening volume.

Two gray-suited minions emerge from the broken window with a massive roll of cloth in their arms.  Mike watches, bemused and dumbfounded, as they affix its corners to the pod with some kind of magnetic pins and let it unroll magnificently down the front of the war pod to reveal a giant portrait of--

_“Oh YEAH, baby it’s MEEEEEE!”_

...He really shouldn’t be surprised anymore.

Mike turns slowly and recoils as the the lights of the red-white-and-gilt tank strike his eyes.

“Whose side are you on now, Duke?” he calls, leaning heavily on his staff again as his left leg starts to wobble.

The Duke’s unmistakeable, improbably-posed silhouette rises smoothly from the top of the tank, accompanied by waves of dry ice and the usual coruscating, multi-colored light show.  “The same side I’ve always been on, Chilton...my own!  I couldn’t let you steal my spotlight _again_!”

“Okay...right,” says Mike slowly, squinting unenthusiastically up at the Duke’s gyrating form.  “Not because you felt bad or anything, huh?”

“ _Mister_ Chilton, I may be bad to the _bone_ , but I _never_ \--”

“Yeah, hang on,” says Mike wearily, lowering himself slowly to a sitting position.  He settles there with a grunt and a sigh, legs dangling over the hole in the roof.  “So what now, huh?  You’ve got the war pod.  Kane’s…”  He cranes his neck stiffly for a moment to squint at the ruins beyond the roof, then gives up with a quiet, resigned groan.  “I don’t know where Kane is, geez.  And you’re here to, what, finish the job?”

“Excee- _hyuse_ me?”

“You wanted me to ‘pay for my crimes’ or whatever,” Mike prompts.  “Are you just gonna pretend that didn’t happen?  ‘Cause I’m pretty sure we got a recording of it back at the Settlement.”

“Please, that was just a test!” says the Duke, resting ever-so-casually on his cane.  “One that you passed with flying colors.   _Mazel bravo._ ”

“Oh boy,” mutters Mike, running a hand through his hair.  The Duke, shockingly, says nothing, and a moment later, Mike looks back up at him, pulling a face.  “So...if you’re not gonna push me off this roof, can you give me a lift down?”

“Of course,” drawls the Duke, and gestures to the war pod, where the massive tapestry of himself with a rose in his mouth still hangs for the world to see.  “You may ride in my brand new Death Box!  But you _owe_ me!”

“Thanks,” Mike grunts, pushing himself exhaustedly to his feet again.  “But no, I don’t.”

“I’ll collect!” calls the Duke as Mike approaches the war pod, where Number Two is waiting at the broken window, leaning out over empty air and blowing a bubble like she doesn’t notice or care about the dark street hundreds of feet below her.  “I always collect, Mister Chilton!”

“Yeah, well, line up,” says Mike dryly, not really caring whether the Duke can hear him.  He takes Number Two’s extended hand, and when her gum pops he can see her smile for just a moment.

\--

The manhunt for Kane starts immediately.  People roam the streets in cautious groups of four or five, makeshift weapons in hand, jumping at shadows and staring around corners.  The people of Motorcity patrol her streets and lock down every exit and entrance.  For once, the gates of old Detroit are guarded as carefully as a Kane Co. access tunnel.

They have the manpower now.  Most of the captured cadets from the second battle of Motorcity are herded into their own capture pods and sent back up through the tunnels to Deluxe, bruised and shaken, weapons stolen.  Surprisingly, the Weekend Warriors and the Kingdom of Raymanthia are responsible for a massive fraction of the captured soldiers; they come jogging up to the gathered crowd in Midtown a few hours after the battle, wearing stolen, badly-fitting Deluxe uniforms and carrying laser swords, looking burned and dirty and very pleased with themselves.

“The armies of our enemy most foul were spread thin in territory unfamiliar to them!”  Ruby intones to a shell-shocked Chuck as one of the doctors fixes a splint firmly to his leg.  “Seriously, we just kept calling and asking for reinforcements, and they just kept sending them in!  It was like the campaign we did when you were new--”

“The Fair Folk of the Whispering Forest,” Chuck says, “Yeah, I remember, hah--holy crap though!  Ow.”

“Don’t put too much weight on it,” says the doctor shortly, and pushes herself up.  “Find somebody to follow up with.  You’ll be fine.”

“Sergeant Darkslayer is welcome in the Weekend Warriors’ camp!”  AJ barks, and claps Ruby on the back.  “Discharged with honoraries, hut-hut!”

“I may visit as my king allows,” Ruby says, and hits him back.  She has to stand up on her toes to reach, but there’s enough force in the blow to make AJ sway and then snap off an admiring salute.

Most of the Kane Co. troops leave willingly when they're sent back up to Deluxe. They're herded into their own capture pods, throwing frightened, angry looks over their shoulders at the eclectic amassed might of Motorcity.  But a surprising number flat-out refuse to return to their home city.

“No way I’m going back up,” one Elite says, holding his bandaged side. “Did you hear what Kane was gonna do to us?”  He has his mask pulled down, and he looks much younger with his face bare.  “I mean...we knew he hated Chilton, but…”

“That was _fake,_ Sami _,_ ” one of the other Elites grits out.  “You know they’ll do anything down here to--”

“I can’t,” says Sami again, and backs away into the crowd of injured from the battle, looking pained but determined.  “...I’m sorry, man.  I can’t work for him.”

Half of the Elites who went to the Cabler’s Settlement seem to feel the same.  Crowds of young men split off from the capture pods, pull off masks and gloves and goggles and strip off their jackets.  A few of the Motorcitizens take pity on them and provide piles of old, patched clothes in brown and black and blue, warm Motorcity earth-tones.  

Mike wanders through the crowds of cadets, limping and exhausted, occasionally stopping to answer a question or offer a small, crooked smile.  Watches the newly-adopted Motorcitizens touch their new clothes with something like wonder, feeling the new textures.  Nobody crowds around him, tries to grab him or anything like that, but everybody is...aware of him.  He’s there, and wherever he goes the people around him know it.

He finds Dutch and ROTH sitting on a pile of scrap, leaning on each other, with ROTH’s remaining arm around Dutch’s slumped shoulders.  He offers a hand, pulls Dutch up, and they walk silent and slow through the milling throngs of people.  Julie is just finishing a conversation with Claire, reassurances and relieved words still hanging in the air as she hangs up and falls in next to Mike and Dutch.  They find Texas having a fist-fight with some Mama’s Boys, too tired to do more than weakly slug each other in the shoulder, and pull him away without more than token resistance.  Chuck is with the crowd of injured from the Cabler’s Settlement, a splint strapped to his leg and an icepack on his bruised head. Texas pulls one of Chuck’s arms over his shoulder without even complaining, and ROTH takes his other arm, helping him off toward the distant, glowing beacons of their cars.

The Burners go home.

Everybody is exhausted, but nobody wants to let Mike out of their sight.  Chuck has taken to actively holding onto his arm whenever he can, partly because he can’t really stand on his own and partly because he seems to think Mike will vanish if he lets go.  Texas is bouncing off the walls on the last fumes of adrenaline, chattering hoarsely and trying to draw Mike’s attention back to him as often as possible.  Julie and Dutch just walk quietly, but every so often one of them will catch Mike’s eye and smile for a second, just reminding themselves of his presence.  

It’s only when they make it into the living area that Mike finally lets himself relax, staggers to the nearest couch and slumps down bonelessly on the ancient cushions with his eyes already shut.  The other Burners come and settle down around him, on either side of him and a few feet away on the ground, and the sleepy conversation soon turns to soft, even breathing.  In the dark, familiar warmth of the hideout, the Burners doze off.

Julie wakes up warm and cramped and still sleepy.  Texas is leaning on her shoulder, and Dutch against her knees, curled up and snoring faintly.  Chuck is slumped in the space where Mike used to be--

Mike.

Julie untangles herself from the other Burners as quickly and silently as she can without waking them up, heart pounding.  When she goes to stand up, every muscle in her body protests--even ones she can’t remember using.  From here she can see Jacob asleep on the couch in the corner, and ROTH is settled on the ground with his eye off, apparently as close to asleep as a bot can be.  No Mike.  When she slides a hand across the cushion where Mike was sitting, it still feels warm to the touch.  He can’t have gone too far.

She’s half-expecting to walk out into the garage and find Mike in Mutt’s driver’s seat, ready to drive...somewhere.  To abandon them.  But instead she finds him sitting on the edge of the hideout, looking out over the garage.  He looks strangely diminished without the jacket on, but he’s wearing his Motorcity colors.  Even though the back of his neck is still tender-looking and red, there’s no foreign glint of metal there.  

He must hear her coming, but he doesn’t turn to look at her until she’s standing next to him, staring at the neon and the collection of battered cars below them.

“Jules,” he says, and the corner of his mouth quirks a little.  “Sorry.  Miss Julie.”

“Not funny,” says Julie, but without much force.  She settles down next to him, hesitates and then leans slowly over to rest her head against his shoulder.  He shifts his weight and turns a little bit, resting his cheek against her hair.

For a long minute, they sit there quietly, just letting the silence sink in.  For once, a quiet moment doesn’t make Mike jittery; he just sits and breathes.

Finally, Julie sits back up again.  Mike straightens too, wincing a little, and watches her as she fixes her vest and kicks her legs out over the edge.  

“...So,” says Mike eventually.  “What’s up?”

“You remember,” says Julie.  It isn’t a question.  They haven’t had a moment to talk about it since he came back, and somehow she just kind of forgot about it, the way she sometimes does when she’s down in Motorcity.  Now, in the quiet aftermath, the enormity of their shared secret seems oppressively heavy in the air.

Mike tilts his head as he looks at her, and it sends a small, painful shock through Julie to see sympathy on his face.  “I remember you kept me sane,” he says slowly.  “I remember you tried to help me every chance you got.  And I wanted to protect you even before I knew who you were--before you knew who I was.”

“But I’m--”

“You’re like me,” says Mike simply, but there’s some shadow in his eyes that tells her there’s more on his mind.  For a long second it stays there--then his eyes slide away from her face.  His voice is tired and flat with old, angry hurt.  “...Except he still loves you.”

“Sometimes I think--”  Julie chokes on the words--she’s never said this out loud, hardly ever let herself think it.  Mike puts an arm around her shoulders, and she wants to shake it away, it feels so wrong and undeserved.  But she doesn’t.  Just says, her voice strong but rough, “I think...I’m the only thing keeping him good.  Or I _thought_ so, before--before _this_ \--  He got so much worse after you left, Mike.  I don’t know what he’d do if he found out about me.”

“He can’t,” says Mike, hard and sudden and protective, and the arm around Julie’s shoulders squeezes.  “We’re not gonna let that happen, Jules.”  

The guilty rush of relief that goes through Julie at those words is replaced almost as suddenly by an entirely different kind of fear.

“Okay, but...what about the others?”

He frowns.  “You mean, do I think you should tell them?”

Julie nods.  Mike sighs, long and heavy and thoughtful, running a hand through his hair.

“I dunno, Jules, I…”

He trails off.  His eyes lose focus, going distant and blank in a way that’s starting to become familiar; he’s remembering something.  Julie’s stomach does an uneasy flip as her brain tries to work out what it could be.  What did she do?  What unpleasant details about Kane Co. Julie are coming back to him?

But when Mike looks up at her, the expression on his face is wholly different from what she expected; a strange mix of realization, shock, and something like pride.  “Maybe we should wait until you’re CEO,” he says.

\--

Deluxe is in chaos.  

Not on the surface; when Julie makes her way through Motorcity’s border patrols, she finds the city as quiet and peaceful as it’s ever seemed.  Moreso, even, with no bot patrols and no troopers.  But the top levels of the tower are full of murmuring and the sound of running feet.  People who spend a long time around her father learn to sense trouble in the air, and the ones who were smart enough to hide in private pods and offices are coming out now, almost as though they can sense the power vacuum.

Julie goes straight to her dad’s office, and she’s only the third one there.  Larsson is standing in the vast, empty room, arguing with Claire’s mom.  Julie gives her a brief smile--she’s always liked Gwen, not least because she was one of the few moms in Deluxe who was okay with sleep-overs and slumber parties--but  Gwen barely seems to notice she’s there.  Even as Julie walks in, she hears familiar voices echoing through the hallways behind her, and one member at a time the Kane Co. Board of Directors filters in after her, slowly filling the room.  Nobody seems to notice Julie.  

“None of this is confirmed,” Claire’s mother points out--Stevens waves her off, and Gwen pulls herself up the same way Claire does when she’s insulted, eyes flashing.  “All we know is that he’s been out of the tower for a couple of hours, and you’re all scheming already!”

“Last time Mister Kane went after that-- _wild boy_ Chilton, the brat somehow managed to wreck the war pod single-handed,” Larsson points out, with much more condescension in his voice than is necessary.  “We have to plan for contingencies!  If he’s not coming back--”

The room devolves into arguing again and Julie’s gut gives a sick jolt.  If her dad was here, he would clear his throat once and have the whole arguing crowd falling in line.  But he’s not, and now one of these men is going to take what he wanted to give her, and _ruin_ it.  Or make it worse.

“He wouldn’t--” she starts. It comes out too small, too rough, barely more than a whisper.  She clears her throat and tries again, louder and more firm.  “He wouldn’t leave his company without a plan!”

The Board of Directors give her an almost unison look of disgruntled disinterest.  Julie bristles.  

“He would leave behind instructions!”  she says.  “He always has a plan.  We should check the cloud.”

“She’s got a point,” says Bell slowly.  “Mister Kane has backup plans for his backup plans.  There may be some kind of...guidance.  Available.”

There’s a grumble of reluctant agreement.  The loudest and pushiest of the Board don’t look too happy about this turn of events; Julie can tell they were hoping to keep what her dad wanted entirely out of the picture.  She has to resist the urge to shoot them a nasty look as screens flicker open around the room and the Deluxe Executive Cloud opens.

They don’t have to look very hard.  The document is at the top of Kane’s files, marked with a priority flag and initialized under his private login.

“Well then,” says Bell, “...would you look at that.”

Julie chews her lip as they download the file, heart suddenly pounding--she knows what it must say.  What’s about to be revealed.  She’s been imagining this day for years, but now that it’s here what is she supposed to say?  How is she supposed to--

“Locked.”

Julie blinks, and then pushes through the circle to stare as well; “DENIED” the screen blares in angry block letters.  “CLASSIFIED INFORMATION”.

“Classified?”  Bell frowns.  “It was on the public cloud.”

“There’s a thumbprint scanner,” says Larsson, disgruntled, and presses his thumb to the screen.  DENIED.  “--and a password.  Why would he leave his last wishes behind a password?  We should be looking elsewhere.”

Julie’s heart is suddenly pounding faster.  She steps forward, staring at the screen over his shoulder; the password cursor blinks expectantly.  

“...Let me look,” she says.

“Hm?”  The board of directors all look around at her and stare, slightly bemused like a piece of furniture just started talking.  Claire’s mother gives her a slightly warning look.  Julie ignores both looks and holds out a hand, doing her very best to exude the same effortless authority as her dad.

“I said, ‘let me look’,” she says, and doesn’t say please.

“And what exactly do you think you--”

Not fast enough.  Julie initializes a personal data-screen and pulls the file, force-transferring it to her own system.  Larsson draws himself up, scowling.

“Young lady,” he starts, but his tone sounds way too close to one of her father’s reprimands.  Julie straightens up and gives him a hard, venomous look, channeling all her anger and fear into a glower that would make even Kane falter.   Larsson almost takes a step back.  The other members of the board of directors are watching, frowning, and Julie is keenly aware of how much bigger than her they all are, this close up.  She half-turns away from them before they can reach for the screen, pacing to the board table.  For a second, she almost settles in her own chair, on the corner close to her dad’s.  But…

There’s a noticeable intake of breath when Julie settles down in the chair at the head of the table.  Julie tosses her hair to hide the sudden tremor in her hands, feeling very small but all-too-conspicuous at the same time, and presses her thumb to the scanner.

There’s a single silent second that seems to stretch on forever, where Julie thinks it’s not going to work.  And then the box flashes bright, blessed green.  ACCEPTED.  ENTER PASSWORD.

Enter password…

For a moment, she thinks maybe it’s “Julie-bear”.  But there aren’t enough spaces, and anyway it doesn’t feel...right.  Not serious enough, or secret enough, or--

There’s one word.  One name that only Julie and her father would think of, that faded into obscurity almost seventeen years ago.  

Julie raises her hands, fingers trembling, closes her eyes for a split second, and then types her mother’s name.

There’s an instant where the privacy asterisks vanish and her stomach drops like a stone--and then the screen flashes a friendly Kane Co. blue and a single page of text appears.  Julie had intended to read the entirety of it closely, but as she gives it a quick once-over something catches her eye--her own name, near the bottom of the document.  She actually gasps out loud, a quick, harsh inhale that draws the rest of the directors even closer to her, craning their necks impatiently for a look at the page.

“What is it?” says Bell, thumbing his mustache nervously.  “What does it say?”

“What does it say about the _company?_ ” Larsson cuts in, hungry intensity flashing through his usual jovial facade.

 _“For the duration of my absence, Kane Co. is the property of my daughter and sole living heir,”_ Julie reads, and looks up at the faces around her, and feels very nearly fearless. _“...Julie Kane.”_

Later, she can’t remember which of them laughs first.  It doesn’t matter, though--within moments it’s almost all of them, and even the ones who aren’t laughing have indulgent smiles on their faces.  Except for Gwen; Julie doesn’t know what to think of the look in her eyes, whether she’s proud or worried or just shocked.

“Let me see that,” says Larsson, reaching for the screen.  Julie pulls it away from him and instead pulls at its corners with two fingers, expanding her father’s will for the entire board to see and turning the text to face them.  The laughter starts to fade as they lean in, scrutinizing it, looking for evidence to contradict her.

“My name is Julie Kane,” she says.

Bell frowns.  “My dear, for as long as I’ve know you, your nametag--”

“It’s read ‘Julie’,” says Julie.  “Just ‘Julie’.  Did you think that was my last name or something?”  It comes out sarcastic and tense with nerves.  She makes her breaths stop shaking, folds her arms to hide her trembling hands.  “You can run a genetic scan if you want.  I’m fine with that, if it’ll make this process go more smoothly.”

They don’t 100% believe her yet, she can see it in their eyes.  But she can also see doubt.

“What process would that be?”  Stevens’ voice is a low, steady rumble.  Somehow, that even tone makes Julie’s stomach clench in a way neither the laughter or the doubt seemed to.

“The process of my inheritance,” she says.  “My dad is...lost.  That’s the best-case scenario.  Whether he’s trapped or…”  And she can see it in Larsson’s face, see he thinks she’s too squeamish to say it, so she forces the word out, looking right at him, “...if he’s dead, this will is valid.  And this company is _mine._ ”

A few of the board members shake their heads disbelievingly or scoff, but as she scans the group, she sees the faintest beginning of actual respect in the eyes of the ones who meet her gaze.

And then Larsson says “Who gives a _damn_ what his will says?”

The bottom drops out of Julie’s stomach.  Larsson steps forward, bulling past the other directors, and reaches out to snatch the screen from Julie’s hands.  Julie sways, almost takes a step back, then squares her shoulders and leans forward instead, refusing to back down.  

“Give it to me.”

“No.”

“Give me the _screen_!”

Oh, he thinks he can intimidate her.

That’s very clear, all of a sudden, in a way it wasn’t before.  Julie stares at him--an angry, power-hungry old man.  No armies, no Ultra-Golems, no guns pointed at her friends.  He couldn’t stand up to her dad, and he thinks Julie is going to be easy to bully?  He thinks Julie can’t deal with his-- _temper tantrum_?!

“I said _no!_ ”  Julie says, and her voice echoes around the room, startlingly loud.  The directors falter, surprised--Julie straightens her back, raises her chin, and thinks... _you have to let them know who’s boss, Julie-bear.  You’re going to do great._  “Now, unless you want me to call security and have you removed from my office- _-”_

“ _Your_ office?”

 _“I name my daughter Julie Kane as my legal successor and inheritor to the entirety of my property and resources!”_ Julie snaps, enlarging the screen even further, until the paragraph naming her the inheritor of Kane Co. stretches almost from floor to ceiling.  

“There’s no need for hysterics,” says Larsson, but there’s an undercurrent of unease in his voice and Julie latches onto it, advancing on him.

“Well, I’m sorry, Larsson, I thought maybe you were having a hard time reading the fine print!  Or maybe you can’t read at all?  That would explain why you seem so excited to stand up to my dad now that he’s gone even though all you did while he was here was kiss his--”

“ _Julie!_ ” says Gwen sharply, and despite herself Julie swallows the rest of her sentence, breathing out hard through her nose.  The rest of the board visibly relaxes, edging away from Julie as Gwen steps forward to inspect the name scrawled at the bottom of the magnified document.

“That’s Mister Kane’s signature,” she says, reaching the bottom.  “We’ll need to look through the entire document, though.  With...Miss Kane...present, of course.”

“But…”  Bell shifts uneasily from foot to foot, eyeing Julie from under thick gray brows.  “She is very young to hold such a...significant position in the company…”

A few heads nod.  Several of the Directors seem conflicted, and now when they look at Julie she can feel them sizing her up, following Bell’s line of thinking.  And with the rage inside her ebbing away, Julie’s starting to feel a little of that doubt herself.  She doesn’t have a choice--she _has_ to take over, she can’t leave it up to any of these people, not even Gwen--but what is she supposed to say?  Outwardly, the argument seems reasonable enough; she’s young, seemingly inexperienced (how do you tell the Kane Co. board of directors you’ve been practicing your leadership skills on gang members in Motorcity?), and up until now has been a complete non-entity within the company.

“Exactly,” says Larsson, glaring warily at her.  “We should at least talk about this before we make any rash decisions.  You’ll need advisors, people to...help you make executive decisions.  And this is all assuming that you _are_ Mister Kane’s--”

A fist passes through the screen displaying Kane’s will.  All the lights in the room flicker and the screen glitches and shorts out--the directors flinch back, and it’s only fury that keeps Julie from doing the same.  She’s not moving, and whatever is causing this...

 _“Shut up,”_ says Red.  “ _All of you._ ”

He stinks of smoke and blood and his armor is covered in ash and dirt.  Julie stares, shock crushing the breath from her lungs, as he stalks past her towards the directors.  She didn’t hear him come in, didn’t notice the door open--he must still have his code.  Waited to go rogue until after her dad was gone, and kept his passkey intact.  

“ _You think you could run this city_?”  Red’s mask turns slowly from face to face.  “ _Any of you?  Old.  Weak._ Cowards.”  That last word is said almost with relish, a hiss of disgust.  The Directors shift, affronted; Red’s gauntlets throw off warning arcs of lightning and they step back, watching him warily.  “ _You think this girl isn’t his daughter?  Look at her.  Look her in the eyes._ ”

“What are you doing here, Red?”  She doesn’t have to be sweet now, doesn’t have to be daddy’s little girl--the words come out even and cold.   _How did you get here.  What did you do to him?!_  “You’ve made it pretty clear whose side you’re on.”

“ _We all did_ ,” says Red, and turns to look at her over his shoulder.  For just a second, Julie can’t breathe.  “ _Allegiances change._ Miss Julie _._ ”

Julie stares him in the face, eye to eye through impenetrable black glass, and feels the Burner logo she’s not wearing sear between her shoulderblades.

Julie makes an executive decision.

“Red,” she says.  “Escort these people out of my office.”

Red watches her for one more silent moment, and then he turns his back on her and cracks his knuckles.  

“ _Yes Miss Kane._ ”

They go easily, for Red.  Julie watches, hands folded behind her rigidly-straight back, head held high, knees locked to keep them from trembling.  She sees some of them throw glances back at her as Red escorts them out of the room--Red may be the weapon, but she’s the hand wielding him.  She’s the CEO now.  It’s only Gwen’s face, turned to hers with muted fear and confusion written across it, that causes the faintest itch of regret in her heart.

After the door slides shut, Red stands still and quiet for a long second, back to Julie.  Her hand twitches for her boomerang, but...she wouldn’t have made it through that without him.  And besides, if he can beat Mike in a fight--

No.  No, she could beat him if she had to.  She has to believe that, or she’s not going to be able to do this.  Julie takes a deep breath and strides away, settling back down in her dad’s chair at the head of the table.

“Well?”

Red half-turns his head, like he’s glancing back at her over his shoulder, and then he laughs a soft, humorless laugh and paces back across the room to the other side of the conference table.  “ _Well what, Miss Kane?_ ”

“What do you want?”

Red pauses and cocks his head to one side in a way that’s becoming annoyingly familiar. _“Excuse me?”_

There aren’t words for how badly she wants to hurt him right now.  “You heard me!” snaps Julie, slamming a fist on the conference table.  “You’re the reason my father’s missing!  If you’re here to get rid of me too--”

 _“I thought you weren’t your father,”_ says Red pointedly, head turning towards her hand, still resting, clenched, on the table.  Julie withdraws it, flushing.   _“_ He _doesn’t spend every minute of his free time in Motorcity--oh, wait.  I guess he does, now.”_

The furious shock propels her to her feet and halfway around the table before she has time to think about it.  “Listen, you--!”

 _“Don’t worry...if I find him again down there, I won’t tell him your little secret.”_ Red pulls out a chair and settles brazenly into it, propping black-booted feet on the perfect white table.   _“...Not that it would matter if I did.  He’s not getting away from me a second time.”_

Julie feels fury sear through her again, but this time there’s a thread of fierce relief too--he’s alive.  He’s alive...for now.  “What do you _want_ ,” she repeats.  “If you’re here to blackmail me, you’re gonna regret it!”

Red goes still for a moment, taken aback or just considering his answer--Julie can’t tell.  In the brief silence, her hand creeps inexorably towards her boomerang.  If she calls security, will they get here in time?  Will it even matter?

 _“Some videos of Julie the Burner might find their way onto the Deluxe network,”_ says Red slowly, and Julie’s blood freezes in her veins.  She whips out the boomerang in a crackling flash of yellow, opening her mouth to say--something, she doesn’t know what, but he continues, sardonic and inscrutable as ever, _“Hey, I’m sure if you keep an eye on me here, that won’t happen.”_

Julie doesn’t stow her weapon, but she doesn’t attack either.  “What are you saying?  Are you telling me…”

 _“I’m asking you whether that bodyguard position is still open,”_ says Red, and Julie stares at him, flabbergasted.

“I don’t want some jerk who hurt my friends following me everywhere!” The words almost crack into a disbelieving laugh.  “Especially not--”  She stops herself before she can mention Motorcity, the Burners, the hideout, but Red seems to know what she was going to say.  

_“Do you really think you’re going down to Motorcity again any time soon?  You’re going to have a lot of work to do starting now.  And you’re going to need help.”_

“Just--to be clear,” says Julie, choked with rage and helplessness, “the only reason I’d be letting you help me is because-- _ha!_ \--because you’re _literally_ blackmailing me into it!  Which is--wow, just when I thought you couldn’t get any weirder--!”

 _“I have my reasons,”_ says Red, in a way that makes Julie want to punch him in the throat again.

“Fine!” she says instead, throwing up her hands in surrender.  “You can keep...playing your game here!  But if I catch you making any trouble for me or my friends…”

He actually _laughs_ , a buzzing chuckle that makes the hair on her arms stand on end.   _“I think we’ve established you’re not going to do anything to me.”_

Julie leans forward, slamming her hands onto his wrists, pinning them against the arm rests and spinning him around to face her.  His feet drop unceremoniously off of the table and Julie’s sure she hears an aborted yell of surprise.

She says, “ _I_ think we’ve established you have no idea what I’ll do.”

He says nothing, just stares blankly back, but after a moment she feels prickling under her hands and lifts them, strands of scarlet electricity stretching between her fingertips and his gauntlets.

 _“Understood,”_ says Red.

“Good,” says Julie, and strides out of the room without dropping a beat, praying he hasn’t noticed the sweat on the bridge of nose or the fear-pulse pounding in her throat.  The instant she gets back to her pod, she’s flying it straight out to Claire’s place and staying there until the sun rises.

\--

_(one week later)_

“Okay,” says Mike.  “Status update.”

“ _Slow going,_ ” says Julie. She looks older these days, somehow--the shadows under her eyes seem deeper than ever, but she still smiles the same way.  “ _How’s it going down there?_ ”  

“...Haven’t found him yet,” says Mike, answering the question she didn’t ask him, and sees her grimace a little bit. It still hurts, trying to imagine _Julie_ \--kind, smart, razor-edged Julie--caring what happens to that--that--

It doesn’t feel great.  But she’s done everything she possibly could to stop her dad, and she’s a Burner.  She’s a Burner too, that’s...really important to remember.  Mike blows a breath out through his nose and pulls up a smile. It still feels like a big effort, but it’s getting easier.  

“We miss you down here, Jules.”

“ _I know,_ ” says Julie.  “ _I miss you guys too.  I--what was that?_ ”

Mike glances up at the sound of another explosion, frowning.  “Gimme a second, Jules--eyes on, guys!”

“ _Please tell me you’re not under attack down there._ ”  Julie sounds a little strained.  Mike has to smile again, and it’s way less of an effort this time.  “ _What’s going on?  Are you in Mutt?_ ”

“Agh, no.”  Mike throws himself back in his couch, frustrated all over again--presses a hand to his ribs and winces.  “I told them I can drive, I’m good to go!  But they got--I dunno, every single doctor and nurse in the whole city, and they all wanted to yell at me.  Two more _weeks_ , Jules!”

“ _So sneak out!_ ”  Julie glances over her shoulder for a second--leans back in, lowering her voice.  “... _one of us should.  I’m sick of Deluxe already, but I can’t go anywhere.  Don’t tell me you can’t, cowboy._ ”

“Well, I mean.”  Mike stops, distracted.  “--Hey!  Hey--you, you in--”

“ _What, Chilton?!_ ” says a new voice on another screen.

“Chuck thinks our guy’s targeting Detroit monuments!  Head for the Spirit, that’s gotta be his next target.”

“ _...Backseat driving much?_ ”  Julie sounds amused, which is just great.  Nobody gets how _frustrating_ this is.  

“Everybody knows my car now!”  Mike says.  “And my face, and my name, the whole city knows me now, and they keep--y’know, they just...they’ve got a lot to say, and I can’t really go anywhere without somebody making a big deal out of it.  It’s...kinda weird.”

“ _Mike, are you_ blushing?”  Julie giggles, a surprisingly light sound with that heaviness still in her eyes.  “ _I didn’t know you even could!”_

“All I’m saying,” Mike continues resolutely, without looking at Julie’s grin or thinking about the way his face feels weirdly warm, “--is somebody would tell one of them--the doctors and the nurses, I mean--and they’d track me down and...take Mutt, probably!”  Who knows what they would do, but it doesn’t really matter.  “I mean, that’s if I could get out without one of the guys noticing.”  Chuck especially keeps hunting him down, just to say a couple of words or put an arm around him for a second or occasionally just give him a weird, kind of pained look and then keep walking.  “I’m not gonna ditch you guys or anything.”

“ _They’re just...scared._ ”  Julie sighs and straightens up.  The room behind her looks familiar, and Mike realizes with a by-now-familiar little sinking jolt that it’s Kane’s private office.  Mike went there only two or three times throughout his career in the Security division, but those times are burned into his brain.  Julie is sitting at a desk, and that’s Kane’s desk.  Kane’s seat.  She looks small, but not as small as he would have thought.  “ _We’re all scared right now.  I don’t know what’s going to happen._   _I don’t…”_  she leans her head into her hands for a second, then straightens up and shakes her hair back, taking a deep, steadying breath.  “ _...Anyway.  If you’re not in Mutt, what’s that noise?_ ”

\--

Carino is roaring down Woodward in his brand-new fine-tuned Buick, with the shiny new number on the side, when a green comm window pops up on his dash and a voice says _“Hey!”_ and he almost crashes.  It’s the Chilton kid--well, come to think of it, he’s only like five years younger than Carino, and he’s been through some shit.  So maybe he’s not a kid.

“Hey?” says Carino, because what the hell else is he supposed to say.

 _“Just checking in on all my Burners,”_ says Chilton.  What the hell.   _“Who’s this?”_

“ _Skylarks_ number 50,” says Carino pointedly, pulling smoothly around a corner.  “Used to be 57, but I...did some stuff during the big invasion.”  He can’t help sounding a little proud--he got a nod from Number 1, after all.  That’s a big deal.   _And_ he’s a Top Fifty now.  Bottom of the list, but...gotta start somewhere.

Chilton pauses for a moment.   _“Huh.  Y’know, I always wondered how you guys deal with the whole promotion thing.  Like, do you swap suits or what?”_

“We deal with it,” says Carino stiffly.  “Did you have something else to say or were we just gonna make small talk while this weirdo blows up more statues?”

He keeps his eyes on the road, away from the comm screen, but he can hear the grin in Chilton’s voice.   _“Like I said, just checking in.  What else do we know?”_

 _“Got a descripto,”_ says a new voice, one that Carino recognizes with distaste as one of the Mama’s Boys.  If he’d known they were joining in, he wouldn’t have volunteered.   _“Lady who saw ‘im after the Workers’ Monument bombing says he got ‘the jawline of a god’ and ‘legs that don’t quit’.”_

 _“Uh...okay,”_ says Chilton.   _“We can...work with it, I guess.  Think you’ll know that when you see it?”_

“No!” snaps Carino.  “I thought we were all gonna try and be professional about this!”

 _“Guess the bluebird’s all out of happiness today,”_ says the Mama’s Boy.  If Carino had to guess, he’d say it’s probably the one named Skillet.  If the truce weren’t on, he’d give the guy a reason to go crying home to mama (whoever the hell that is).   _If_ the truce weren’t on, and if the Skylarks and Mama’s Boys hadn’t just exchanged some specialty auto parts in a display of good faith.

Carino does _not_ want to be the guy who starts the war up again.

“Did she say...anything else?” he grits out, and then yells as yet another screen pops up, showing a bored face framed by blonde, bobbed hair and a sharp gray cap.

_“Yeah, Duke of Detroit Security Feed Room here.  Honk if ya love the Duke.”_

Carino’s hands stay firmly on the wheel, and he’s pleased to notice that neither Skillet nor the two new cars that just merged onto the street to flank him seem to love the Duke that much either.

 _“Yeah, alright,”_ says the blonde girl after a moment.   _“Got cameras on Randolph, caught a mook with coiffed-up brown hair and a duffel bag goin’ into the old opera house a couple hours ago.  Thought it might be our guy.”_

\--

“Doesn’t sound like anyone we know,” says Dutch, pulling up level with the Buick as the Spirit of Detroit comes into view.  It towers above them, a gigantic muscular man cast in bronze, now black and turquoise with age.  He’s kneeling, arms raised on either side of him, one hand cupping a golden orb with rays of light emanating from it.  His head is turned attentively to his other hand, where the tiny, rusted form of a small family sits on his palm, reaching for the sky.

Art-wise, it’s not really Dutch’s jam, but there’s something about it that always holds his gaze; it’s a piece of ancient Detroit history, the kind of thing Kane would destroy in an instant and replace with a statue of himself.  He keeps his eyes on it as they approach, only looking away when Stronghorn roars into line behind him.

“Tex, you got anything?”

_“Uh, yeah, lady, first off hey what’s up this is Texas and these are my guns, ka-chaw--”_

“Anything _else,_ man?”

_“And second off, did this guy’s legs look like quitters?”_

There’s an instant clamor of exasperated voices from the other cars as they all hit the brakes to park around the Spirit.  Texas’s voice is the loudest, complaining, _”Hey well it’s all we got, alright?  Had to ask!”_

“ _Didn’t get a look at his gams,”_ the lady says, bored.  “ _Jaw like a statue though.  Dressed like a pirate got it on with a cowboy. That help?_ ”

“Statue?  So what, his face was all made outta rocks.”  Texas wrinkles his nose. “Texas’s fists are gonna--”

“Thanks for your help, ma’am,” says Dutch, and force-quits Texas’s comm, addressing the other cars  with slightly nervous authority.  “We’ll head to the opera house--keep an eye on the Spirit, guys.  Julie--”

There’s a familiar, quiet moment, that feeling like a taking a step in the dark and landing too soon.  Dutch swallows, and doesn’t let himself look down at the grayed-out icon where Nine Lives should be on his dash.  Texas growls, frustrated.

“... _Opera house, Dutch,_ ” says Chuck’s floating avatar, and the pixellated face somehow contrives to look sympathetic and unhappy even without facial animation.   _“We’ll just hafta...figure it out without her.  We’ve done it before._ ”

“I know, I know.”  Dutch settles back in his seat.  “I know the gates are all locked down and all, but--”

“ _She’d come down if she could,”_  Mike says, quiet and very firm. “ _She can’t.  That’s all there is to it.  Focus, guys._ ”

“Hey!”

It’s one of the Skylarks.  Dutch blinks at the avatar for a second, startled, and then says “...yeah?”

“ _We see him,_ ” says the Skylark--48, it looks like, by the pixellated number superimposed on his forehead.  “ _The Weekend Warriors have got a guy on foot in pursuit.  Chilton, 33 has got a link for you, you can piggyback his comms._ Just _for now._ ”  That last is still said with a kind of aggressive suspicion, but Mike laughs, lighting up.

“ _Sure, dude!  Hit me with it!_ ”  And then, right before the guy can log off, “... _Thanks for this, by the way!  It’s great how you guys are workin’ together.  Really great._ ”  And he signs off.

There’s a moment of silence.

 _“I hate it when he does that,”_ mutters 48.

 _“Dumb kid,”_ says Skillet.

_“Friggin’ Chilton.”_

_“He’s just so--”_

“So _what_?” says Dutch pointedly.

_“Well, he’s--he’s just--”_

The last voice seems to get lost looking for the right word and falls into awkward, uncomfortable silence.

“Yeah,” says Dutch with satisfaction, “that’s what I thought.  Now, where’s the guy?”

Ten minutes later, the pack of cars roll to a halt around The Fist, where a tall young man in a brown trenchcoat and very snug pants is firing off indiscriminate shots from his laser pistols at the crowd of gang members already gathered.  He’s somehow managed to climb onto the massive bronze arm, keeping his balance with impressive coordination, ducking and weaving as the gang members around him take pot-shots.  There’s something stuck to the supports around The Fist; a handful of grenade-sized spheres, with ominously-flashing green lights on them.

“Now, I’m not sayin’ I’m okay with any of this crap he’s pullin’,” says Dutch as he climbs out of Whiptail, “But I really wanna know what he does to those bombs to make ‘em stick to stuff like that!  I thought maybe he magnetized ‘em, but bronze ain’t magnetic so they must--”

“Blah blah blah nerd stuff let’s take this guy _down!_ ” shouts Texas, leaping onto Stronghorn’s roof with gunchucks blazing.  Almost immediately, a shot from the guy’s pistol punches into his side, throwing him back off the roof again--he hits the ground hard with a winded huff, tries to push himself up and then doubles over, clutching his ribs.

“We’re _trying!_ ” yells a Skylark, ducking behind his own car to reload.  “You think we’re not trying?”

“ _I_ wanted to shoot the bombs,” volunteers Skillet the Mama’s Boy, “But Chilton--”

“Said you weren’t allowed to destroy a priceless piece of Detroit’s art history?” snaps Dutch.  “No kiddin’!”

There’s another screech of tires--Chuck tumbles out of his car, wide-eyed and pale but not nearly as traumatized as he used to look after a drive.  The guy on the Fist takes a shot at him--he yelps and dives behind Whiptail with Dutch, flattening himself against one tire.

“ _What did I miss?_ ”  he hisses.  Dutch rolls his eyes and shrugs.

“I’d be awful obliged if you’d let me get on with my misbehavin’!” calls the man in tight pants, ducking a fresh flurry of projectiles from the crowd around him.  “It’s the thirty-third century, time to clear out these ol’ relics and make room for the new!”

“Art’s always relevant, man!” Dutch yells, reaching for his omnitool.  “You wanna make a statement, just _tag_ a sculpture, don’t-- _whoa!”_

“Now, I appreciate your intellectual commentary,” calls the guy, his gun still leveled at Dutch’s hiding place, “but I’ll thank you not to interrupt my mission statement all the same.”

 _“What did he say?”_ says Mike, one of his screens appearing next to Dutch.   _“He thinks the monuments are...too old or something?”_

“Basically,” growls Dutch, glaring around Whiptail’s tires.  “And he shot Tex.”

 _“What?!”_ There’s a muffled bumping noise from the other side of the screen, and its view jostles and blurs.

“It’s okay!” says Dutch hurriedly, immediately regretting mentioning Texas.  “He’s fine, just a little burned, I think.  Look, man, just stay where you are and tell us what you want us to do!”

“ _Uh...yeah._ ”  Mike frowns for a second, thinking, then nods decisively.  “ _Okay.  You guys hang back for a sec, okay?  No more shooting, for now.  Chuck, let me talk to him._ ”

“I don’t have a comm line to the whole city, Mikey,” says Chuck, but Mike just smiles at him and he’s already pulling up a screen.  “...gimme a sec, I’ll...figure it out.”

“ _You guys are gonna hold your fire, right?_ ”  

“No promises,” says Carino grimly.

“ _Just give me five minutes,”_  Mike says.  “ _Chuckles?_ ”

“His comms are set up weird,” Chuck grumbles, and presses a few more keys, glaring at his screen.  “--okay.  Yeah, okay.  Your quality’s gonna suck, but you’re on.  Go ahead.”

The man in the coat has advanced to the knuckles of the Fist, cautiously looking down at the crowd--he jerks and raises his gun as Mike makes the call, and then stops, brows furrowing, and pulls up a screen.

“...howdy.”

“ _Hey,_ ” says Mike, tinny and distant, just barely audible.  “... _’y friends--shoot at you for--_ ”

“I did take notice of that,” says the man, a little warily.  “Whose acquaintance am I makin’?”

“ _...’ke.  Mike Chilton._ ”  Mike’s distant voice sounds warm, very soothing.  One of the Mama’s Boys raises his gun slowly--Chuck flails his hands warningly, and the Mama’s Boy lowers the gun again, looking sulky.

“ _What’s your name, dude?”_  

“Ben,” says the man, and tips an imaginary hat.  “Renwalds.”

“ _Ben,_ ”  Mike says.  “ _Look, man.  Let’s just talk._ ”

The conversation feels long, especially with the presence of the bombs stuck to the struts supporting The Fist, but it can’t have lasted more than a minute or two.  The gang members around the sculpture slowly straighten out of their firefight crouches, glancing at each other as Mike and Renwalds talk quietly overhead.  There seems to be an argument of some sort going on--Mike’s voice rises briefly in impassioned entreaty, something with the words _history_ and _Kane_ and _Motorcity_ in it--but Renwalds’ gun has dropped to his side and he looks thoughtful.

“...Well, I can respect that,” he says finally, raising his voice from a conspiratory undertone.  “But I don’t aim to get taken in today, Burner kid.”  

 _“You could work with us,”_ Mike offers, to audible groans from the gang members.  Renwalds grins.

“Don’t reckon I’d be too welcome.”

_“But--”_

“I...got some stuff to think about on my own, but you just keep drivin’ around in those shiny cars of yours, doin’ good and takin’ names.”  He winks, reaches into the duffel bag behind him, and before anyone can even reach for a gun, throws something purple and fist-sized onto the ground.  There’s a soft, heavy _whumpf_ and suddenly the air below him is a sea of mauve smoke, full of blind, coughing gang members.

“Oh,” says Renwalds, easing towards the edge of The Fist, “and maybe I oughtta activate these bombs before I go, huh?  You’d have a good five minutes to figure out how to shut ‘em down, I reckon you’d have fun with--”

“Hey!”

Renwalds turns, bemused, to see a tiny man dressed in three layers of horrible, ancient coats glaring up at him.

“Well howdy, old-timer, what brings you--”

“Quit yakkin’ and get offa my monument!” says Old Engine, and delivers a frighteningly sharp, powerful kick to Renwald’s rear end.  The young man staggers, flails his arms and topples ungracefully into the cloud of smoke.  There are a couple of yells from the depths of the cloud, but Renwald must make it to his feet and out of the somehow, because when the smoke finally clears, he’s gone.

 _“Good job, guys!”_ says Mike, even as the gangs grumble and wander back to their cars.   _“We did it!”_

“You just _talked_ to him until he stopped,” points out Carino.  Mike laughs.

_“Yeah, well, that doesn’t usually go down so well.  I’m sure you’ll get more than your fair share of excitement on the next mission.”_

“The _next_ \--”

But Mike’s already moved on, switching to his personal connection with the rest of the Burners.   _“Hey, Tex, you good to go?”_

“Bored,” grunts Texas.  “Hey, Mike, you shoulda at least let me punch that guy once, look what he did to my jumpsuit!”

_“Sorry, dude, maybe next time.  Think you guys could grab us a pizza while you’re out?”_

“We had pizza last night,” Dutch points out, but he’s smiling.

 _“I’ll let you pick the toppings,”_ says Mike, spreading his arms wide in entreaty.   _“What more do you want, dude?”_

Dutch shakes his head, moving towards Whiptail.  “Fine.  We’ll drop by Antonio’s on our way back.  Hope you like synthetic pineapple!”

 _“Whatever you want,”_ Mike repeats, settling back in his chair.   _“Just make it a pizza.  I think that’s why I broke the implant, y’know.  I’ve been thinkin’ about it, and deep down I just really missed pizza.”_

“You want pizza for every meal, you got it, my guy,” says Texas.  “You just wait right there, Tiny, we got this!”

 _“Haha, alright!”_ Mike grins, and the bruises and scrapes on his face are fainter today, the crook in the bridge of his nose is barely noticeable.   _“I’ll be here when you get back.”_

\--

The Duke’s Special Guest is making trouble again.

It’s nothing his gorgeous and capable Number Two can’t handle of course, but it is annoying.  One of his henchladies has a broken ankle now.  And one of his best drivers almost got strangled to death!  The Duke does _not_ approve.

The guards at the door have been doubled, and they stand to attention and raise their guns at the sound of footsteps, then relax and bow their heads as they see who it is.  “No news, my Duke,” reports the leader, and crosses her wrists respectfully behind her back.  “Uh...no trouble since earlier.”

“And there ain’t gonna be,” Number Two says pointedly.  The minions guarding the door nod hastily and murmur agreement. “Open up.”

The guards pause and glance at the Duke--he waves a hand carelessly.  “What are you waitin’ for?”

“...yes, my Duke,” says the squad leader, and steps out of her deferent bow to level her gun at the door.  The rest of the squad follows suit.  “Hey, Kn--hey, Bailey.  Open the door.”

Eric “Knives” Bailey pulls one of his eponymous knives from the clinking mess on his belt, holds it ready in one hand and reaches out to the door-handle.  “Hey in there!”  he says, and turns the handle.  “If you’re not on the other side of the room when we open this up, you’re gonna get your other arm broke, you got it?!  Back to the wall!”

There are a few seconds of silence, and then, in the room, the faintest sound of somebody’s feet on shag carpet.  Bailey nods at the rest of the squad, resettles his grip on his knife and throws the door open.  

“Presenting,” Number Two drawls, and then her hand moves in a blur as a shadow in the dim room shifts.  Her gun is out and pointed at the Duke’s “guest” before the rest of the guards even have a chance to move; there isn’t even a hitch in her voice.  “--The Duke of Detroit!”

The Duke strolls into the room, spinning his cane in one hand, and plants it on the ground, looking the shadowy figure at the back of the room up and down.

“You know,” he says.  “I thought you were a smarter than this.  I’ve been a good host.  I even fixed up your arm for you!  And this is how you repay me.”

Sullen silence.  His guest doesn’t move, doesn’t answer.  The Duke rolls his eyes behind his sunglasses and jabs out with his cane, aiming for the splinted arm--his guest makes a single, almost inaudible noise at the impact, but doesn’t move.

“... _I thought you wanted me dead.”_

“That was yesterday, baby,” says the Duke, and for a second there’s no hint of humor in his smile, just vicious satisfaction.  “...This is _today._ ” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Every character obviously played a part, but I feel the need to give Tennie an honorable mention for suddenly becoming pivotal in these last three chapters or so! I hope we can keep giving her the attention she deserves in the future. <3  
> "What's up with Red?" you ask us. Like we know.  
> As we closed in on the end of this story, it became increasingly apparent that having taken on some unfinished business from Season 1, we had inadvertantly locked ourselves into tying off those loose ends. Also, that Officer Present/Live Free wasn't going to be sufficient for those purposes. So, in short, sequel. There's going to be a sequel. After we've had a little break and gotten all our shit together again (and moved into our new apartment!)  
> In the interim, please expect the promised short chapter of fun facts, writing stats, and little comic strips we came up with while writing! We would both like to thank all readers and reviewers from the bottoms of our gross little hearts!! It means everything to us that there were still people around to read this fic and share their reactions to it. Until next time, Motorcitizens. Live fast...etc.


	18. You Thought It Was Over?!  The Bonus Chapter!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fun facts! Stats! Four-panel comics! AND WITH THESE THINGS, the announcement that we've written 45k+ words of the sequel and have four full chapters in the wings (some of them waiting to be edited, but still)! So expect a new fic very soon, hopefully. uvu Thank you for reading!

**Plot Planning**

**(No longer correlates entirely with the story we ended up with!  But still fun to read.  Written collaboratively, of course--just pouring everything into a Google Doc, writing at the same time, cutting into each other's sentences, etc.  sitting like two feet from each other, lol)**

  * Mike gets caught/infected/is tricked into using the means of mind control somehow
  * (Julie’s lessons in leadership continue)
  * Civil war plot I:
    * 1\. Use amazing new driver to turn the gangs of Motorcity against each other
    * (But the Burners stop you at every turn, so what do you do?)
  * Someone busts the Duke’s stuff
    * Kane sends Mike to the Duke’s mansion to exact some punishment for backing out on him: Beat him up bust some cars totally ruin his men and probably punch him in the face.
    * Gotta make sure Mike is effective against somebody who isn’t his loyal team first.  Kane’s kind of savvy that way.  “Sir it might be possible to use willpower to overcome the mind control!”  “MAKE IT MORE POWERFUL!!!! In the meantime...I have a test run in mind.”  “(Sir that’s dangersou!!:LSKD!! dNAGER!) (SHUPT UP))
  * Silent death machine in body armor (Kane Co white and blue to contrast Red + emphasize his loyalty?) shows up and attacks the Burners; no one else sees him though so they can’t prove he exists…???
  * Julie gets directly introduced by her dad and Mike is like Sir _I have to report the presence of a burner in Kane Co. tower_ and then Kane’s like “no Chilton that’s my daughter”
    * “Commander, this is my daughter, and you will obey her orders as you would obey mine unless they _directly contradict_ your directives”  That way Julie can’t order, like… ‘Mike, stop obeying Kane!!’  Cue Julie having to order him around b/c her dad expects her to learn how.
    * Julie’s learning to be the CEO so it’s a case of “hey dad if I’m gonna run this company you have to let me in on your business behind the scenes” “okay sweetie meet Mike”
    * Meanwhile Red’s all keeping a close eye on them n shit. Red is that one dude who notices the things you really wish he wouldn’t notice
    * What if at first Red thinks Julie has a dumb high-school-girl bad-boy crush on Mike and is like “the dude has done shit, girl” and Julie’s like oh god I have to play along “well he’s just so _dangerous_ and _ruggedly handsome_ but I know, he’s like, super bad.  so bad and terrible. oh no.”
    * All Burners start to sort of low-key suspect what’s going on, for different reasons, while Julie is 100% certain but won’t say anything until she has a way to fix it.  Probably blames herself.
    * Dutch recognizes the way he drives (if he has a vehicle like Red does)
    * Texas + fighting style
    * Chuck “just knows”
    * Mike remembers what he sees/feels/hears etc. while controlled but it just...feels okay at the time.  And then later he gets hit by ALL OF HIS REGRETS AT ONCE
        * Kind of like the descriptions of the Imperius Curse?   _ahhh the voice says I should do this.  Yeah...I’m...doing that…_
  * Mike gets brought out of it/almost all the way out of it for a message to the Burners; obvs angst and pain all over the place
      * The Burners go in guns blazing and Kane captures everybody but Julie, and puts DEATH COLLARS on all of them, leaving one with Mike.  Then, to everybody’s surprise and concern, he lets them all go????  Possibly in such a way that they think it’s an escape?
    * Plenty of the story is spent figuring out what they do.  They start to think they’re not going to do anything!  Then Chuck can be like “THEY WILL KILL US PAINFULLY” (alt, there’s always Julie finding hidden plans etc. if that’s more plot-convenient.)
    * A COMBINATINO!
  * Julie finds out for real
  * **FLASHBACK TO THE BEGINNING OF THE PLOT** ((Kane turns off control to gloat at Mike+deliver some exposition, then turns it back on again??))
    * “why haven’t you killed me yet?” “why would I kill my best officer?” *dramatic cut to white*
  * (Mike can’t get back into motorcity due to Kane Co. tech?)
  * Civil war plot II:
    * 1\. Get everyone to hate the mysterious newcomer
    * 2\. Reveal the newcomer to be Mike Chilton
    * 3\. Thus causing everyone to hate the Burners, getting them out of the way
    * 4\. Question: does the duke realize that this is a Kane plan and try to thwart it out of spite, or does he go along with it because IT WAS CHILTON CHILTON BROKE IN AND DENTED MY LADIES AND PUNCHED ME IN THE FACE CHILTOOOOOON!!!!!! >BC
  * AND THEN Mike breaks the mind control, only to learn that his friends are in danger b/c implants
  * If Mike goes and dies, Kane will spare his friends after Motorcity is destroyed (cue demo because EMOTIONAL TORMENT)
  * So it’s all going down, but then the Burners pleas or smthg get through to him or they tell him they know what’s happening and he’s like, “sorry guys” and it looks like they’re all gonna die (though not after Mike delivers one more big FUCK YOU speech to Kane, possibly through massive amounts of pain as his own implant begins to go?)
  * Then Red and Harley turn up and all that stuff goes down
  * Mike’s like “KANE IS COMING” and the gangs are like “u lyin liar chilton we’re gonna put you on trial”
  * And they do, and Mike won’t defend himself but other people step up to--other motorcitizens, Harley, the Burners, and then they play the recording Mike made earlier, which makes Mike feel better and the gangs feel worse
  * Then Kane arrives for the Cablers’ settlement and they take him down with some combination of Tennie’s defenses and Vega’s car tech and stuff???



 

**Section Titles (the best of)**

 

  * Red and Kane want All the Details OMG
  * Motorcity Gets Together to Hash It Out
  * We Seem to Find Out Where Mike Is
  * PRISON BREAK
  * Flashback: Mike Wakes Up 1
  * Mike Wakes Up 2 (And Forgets)
  * Kane Wants Red to Fight Chilton
  * Kane Wants Red to Beat Chilton the Fuck Up
  * Harley is Shocked by Kane’s Disregard for the Scientific Method
  * The Brainwashing Continues
  * Prison Fake
  * Back in the Present: Holy Shit Blue is Mike
  * Blue Strikes Yet Again (Julie Does Not Tell Them He’s Mike)
  * Julie and Mike are PTSD Buddies
  * Mind Control, Jacob?
  * Mike Belongs in Deluxe
  * What’s Up with These Collars
  * “Where is Mike?” Ask the Children
  * The Neon God They Made (Unwelcome News from Julie)
  * Girl Talk
  * Tender Jukebox Moment
  * Red Sings A Boy Like That from West Side Story
  * Jacob BELIEVES
  * Brain Fast, Brain Free (W/ Harley Soliloquoy)
  * Julie the Cat Burglar
  * Commander Chilton’s Final Mission
  * None of the Gangs Want to Help; Everyone Hates Mike
  * Battle Royale; Fight, Chilton, Fight!
  * Red and Harley…to the Rescue…???
  * What Do We Do (With Mike Chilton) Now
  * The Motorcity Invasion Force is Behind Schedule
  * The Trial Of Mike Chilton
  * Mike Chilton on Trial: The Coninuinining
  * Didn’t I Tell You Didn’t I Warn You Do You Have a Plan
  * Motorcity Strikes Back
  * EVERYONE’S DEAD DAVE
  * Chuck and Harley Goin’ Diving in the Dumpster
  * The Trap is Set
  * Mike Continues to be a Christ Figure, Probably
  * We’ve Only Shown You 80% of Our Power!!
  * The Cavalry Arrives?
  * What Do We Do (with Julie) Now
  * Oh Fuck It’s That Guy
  * Kanepilogue



**Fun Typos**

  * Chuch squeaks
  * “You,” Kane snarp.
  * Texas snorta
  * Her dad’s hair runs slowly through her hair.
  * he tucks his arms in head as close to his body as possible,
  * _“None of your business,”_ says Red, and crosses his arms sharply, shoulders tense.  “ _I don’t see how it’s any of your_ business.”
  * “...Very good, Commander,” says Mister Kane, and warmth obliterates the last traces of spain.
  * Mike puts an arm around Chuck and Jacob’s shoulders, looking from one to the other with a lip-splitting smile on his head
  * she’s always liked Gwen, not least because she was one of the few momos in Deluxe who was okay with sleep-overs and slumber parties



 

**Fun Facts**

-Originally “Officer Present”, with a file for finished chapters called “Officer Absent”.  Title changed in hopes of being less spoiler-licious.  Now we regret it, Toasty most of all b/c she pushed for it.

-Started in October of 2015, when the idea of Mike being taken back to Kane Co. to work for them spiraled into a good hour’s worth of furious storyplanning in a collaborative doc.

-Written mainly in coffeeshops, libraries, and bookstores.  Lots of hot chocolate consumed.  Lots of Chipotle burritos purchased afterwards

-Alex Harley was created as a foil to Mike.  Originally just a red herring for Blue’s identity, he eventually became the facilitator of the mind control plot out of convenience and then, in a shocking turn of events, an actual semi-decent human being with a massive crush on Mike.  His name comes from the song “Alex Chilton” by The Replacements and “Harley Davidson”.  His father’s name is David, which is why he used it as a pseudonym when making the fake call to Motorcity near the beginning of the fic.

-yes, this does indeed make him “Harley, David’s Son”.  It’s not a coincidence that he’s amazed by the motorcycle when Mike wheels it out at the beginning of the Big-Ass Showdown.  GET IT HARLEY DAVIDSON LIKE A MOTORCYCLE DO YOU GET IT.

 

**Wordcount Stats**

Snarls snarled:

  * Red (13)
  * Kane (4)
  * The Duke (2)
  * Julie, Texas (1)



 

Snaps snapped:

  * Julie (7)
  * Dutch, Kane (6)
  * Red (4)
  * Tennie, Chuck, The Duke (3)
  * Foxy (2)
  * Texas, Rayon, Harley (1)



 

Grins grinned:

  * Mike (28)
  * Texas (7)
  * Dutch (6)
  * Chuck, Harley (5)
  * Kane, Junior, The Duke (2)
  * Jacob, Tennie, Julie, Tooley, Number Two (1)



 

**4-Panel Comics**

 

 

[ ](https://68.media.tumblr.com/8a7fd7c94350a655935431c5b84a4786/tumblr_ou9y726eGi1rpgispo4_1280.png)

 

 

 

[ ](https://68.media.tumblr.com/2a668a0034c420e0b4dc4dc83afc7f35/tumblr_ou9y726eGi1rpgispo7_1280.png)

 

 

[ ](https://68.media.tumblr.com/fb1cf7c9c1fe72810f5b8413ab9f1acb/tumblr_ou9y726eGi1rpgispo2_1280.png)

 

 

[ ](https://68.media.tumblr.com/9a7259f08b3fd3be03829fb19da5ad37/tumblr_ou9y726eGi1rpgispo3_1280.png)

 

 

[ ](https://68.media.tumblr.com/0750224c8fe9a85135bc0a2f8fbc3160/tumblr_ou9y726eGi1rpgispo1_1280.png)

 

 

[ ](https://68.media.tumblr.com/e4e67dacdd8d1cd300a585b0f3fc5bae/tumblr_ou9y726eGi1rpgispo5_1280.png)

(There is a giant wall painting in Sydney, Australia of Kanye West kissing himself.  That's about as much explanation as I can give for this.)

 

 [](https://68.media.tumblr.com/0b0696c2b7841be7bc547f93d80f06de/tumblr_ou9y726eGi1rpgispo6_1280.png)

GET WREKT, LARSSON.

**\--**

“Look,” says Chilton, and brushes his hair back out of his eyes for a second.  “...you did some bad stuff.  That doesn’t make you bad through-and-through, okay?  You can still do good.”

He smiles.

“Oh no,” says Alex Harley.

“No, I mean it,” says Chilton, apparently _completely_ unaware of exactly what he’s doing.  “You just gotta work harder, turn yourself around.  You’re a smart kid.  Not bad at fist-fighting either.”

“Oh,” says Alex again.  “No.”  and then, as that brilliant slice of a smile begins to fade, he hurries on, “--no, I--of course, yes, I’ll...I’ll try.”

Mike smiles at him again  Alex stares at him and feels the sudden, overpowering need to go find somewhere quiet to sit down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See y'all soon!


End file.
